When Evil Lingers
by blackwolf412
Summary: Okay, I admit, I thought we were done with the crazy. I thought Life was gonna be peaceful and normal and, y'know, not crazy. But then Life had a violent pregnant-lady mood-swing and screwed up its chances of ever gaining my trust. Thanks, Life. Thanks a lot. You're a jerk.
1. Chapter 1

you should know the drill. if you haven't read _when sparks fly_ or _when they chase us_, you should probably go read them. and then go read those two little one-shot thingies, _chasing a memory_ and _santa barbara witch trials_. because they're awesome and deserve to be read and/or reviewed. and once you've done all that, then you can come read this.

(or not. i can't exactly control what you do.)

(or can i?)

(dun-dun-dun.)

either way, let us once again epically embark upon an epic tale of epicness.

disclaimer: blah blah don't own max ride blah. do i really have to do this?

* * *

Wait.

Wait a second.

You mean I'm _not_ going to have a normal life?

How utterly unexpected!

(And by unexpected I mean totally expected.)

Okay, I admit, I thought we were done with the crazy.

I thought Life was gonna be peaceful and normal and, y'know, not crazy.

And it was, for a while.

Life was all nice and let me live it up in Santa Barbara with all my friends,

and we were runnin' around all fun and fancy-free,

without adult supervision,

just doin' what we do,

and it was totally awesome.

But then Life had a violent pregnant-lady mood-swing and decided to. . .

Well, we'll get there.

But as a hint, I'll say this:

Because of what it did, Life pretty much effed up its chances at _ever_ gaining _my_ trust.

Thanks, Life.

Thanks a lot.

You're a bitch.

_**1. we're baaa-aaaack**_

I breathed carefully through my nose, making no noise myself but straining my ears to hear anything else that could possibly be making noise.

All was quiet. Dare I say silent. I couldn't even hear wind, or bird chirping, or bug buzzing. Not even the lapping of water.

(This may be entirely due to the fact that I was inside, but let's not assume things.)

My mouth twitched in a frown, and my finger tested the trigger of my gun. Stupid thing wasn't cocked, but I didn't dare cock it. The noise would alert my enemies to my position.

And speaking of, where _were_ my enemies, anyway?

I waited a few more elongated minutes until, suddenly, just beyond my hiding place, I heard a faint _sss_. My lips curled in a rather wicked smile.

All in one blurred moment, I cocked my gun, rose up, and twisted around, squinting one eye shut so I could sight down the barrel. The red t-shirt marked the figure as an enemy, so I squeezed the trigger and fired.

But he'd heard me cock it, so he managed to duck out of sight before my bullet could hit him.

I cursed under my breath and was about to reload when an arm entered my vision, a gun identical to mine held in the hand. I hit the deck, and the shot went high, anyway, so I was safe.

"Kinda hard to hit somethin' you're not even aimin' at, huh, Con?" I called out as I reloaded my gun.

There was a pause, but then he replied with: "Spark? What the frick, we're on the same team!"

"Uh, no we're not," I said in a _duh_ sort of tone. I grabbed a handful of Nerf darts from my stash and went back up on my knees, peering over the back of the couch. "Didn't you hear? A bunch of us went traitor. I'm part of the Renegades now."

An irritated sigh drifted from the kitchen, where Con was hiding. "Next time, please notify me when you're ditching the team."

"You mean this doesn't count as notification?" I called back, loading up my gun. It was inconvenient that Con was in the kitchen - see, normally, he and Sy weren't allowed in there, because after they'd somehow managed to turn the simple task of heating up a Hot Pocket into the complete and total destruction of the microwave, the oven, _and_ the dishwasher, Iggy had eternally banned them from the kitchen. Forever. But I guess today was an exception, partly because the whole house was free game, and partly because there was little chance of Con or Sy causing another cooking catastrophe. Though I wouldn't be surprised if one of them somehow managed to demolish the toaster using only Nerf darts and a bagel.

. . .I do believe I've been sidetracked.

Anyway.

If I wanted to get a good angle on the kitchen, I'd have to leave my mini-fort and go _all_ the way across the room, where I could hopefully sneak a shot around the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen. I looked around and listened hard, but saw and heard nothing. So, I snuck out from behind the couch, half-crawling across the floor towards the doorway to the other room (which had a clear shot on the kitchen). I was almost in position when all of a sudden the stairs distantly creaked.

_Jesusnoit'satrap!_

I leaped and tried to ninja-roll over to the safety of an overturned coffee table, but I wasn't quick enough. In all of about two seconds, someone managed to run all the way down the front hall and across the living room, shooting me in the head with a Nerf dart mid-ninja-roll as he passed.

I completed the roll, but dropped right back to my back in frustration. "Friiiiii-_iick!_" I cried. _"Crap!"_

There was another _sss_ as Sy tried to slow to a stop. He didn't take into account his new socks, though, and slid across the tiled floor farther than he meant to - he crashed into the open basement door and would've taken a nasty tumble down the stairs had he not grabbed the doorknob.

"Whoa," he panted, regaining his balance. "That could've been disastrous."

"Nice shot," I heard Con say to him. "Almost ruined it with the socks, though."

"Thanks. I think."

"Hey, Spark?" Con walked through the doorway into the living room and looked at me innocently. "How many kills do you have now?"

I lifted my head to glare at him. "Shut up."

"Thought so." He smirked, then lifted his head and shouted loud enough for the whole house to hear. "GAME OVER! Last member of Team Renegade has died! Demons win!"

I sat up and leaned back on my hands, frowning as Sy came back into the room to stand beside Con.

"You know, I really hate it when you guys work together," I said.

Con smirked and spun his Nerf gun around his finger. "Well, when it's to take you down, I'll do just about anything."

I looked at Sy, but he just shrugged. "You turned traitor without me. I felt unloved."

"So you went to _Con._" I shook my head in mock disgust. "And you call _me_ a traitor?"

He chuckled and came over to help me to my feet. I accepted his aid, but once I was up I raised my gun and shot him on the forehead, making him wince. "Ow!"

"That's what you get for going into cahoots with Con," I said. "You're lucky if I don't put you on trial again for making a pact with the devil."

Sy grinned. "Cahoots?"

"I can't believe you actually thought I wouldn't know you'd left," Con said incredulously. I looked at him and he half-smiled. "Come on, you have to give me more credit than that."

"On the contrary I believed I'd be able to keep doing this time and again," I told him. Then I sighed dramatically. "But. . .you have exceeded my highest expectations."

"Gee, thanks," he sneered.

The thudding of multiple pairs of feet echoed up the stairs as some of the remaining participants of the Nerf war ascended. It'd been a good fight - everyone had decided to play, so we'd split up into two mostly-equal teams: Angels (led by Max) and Demons (led by Con). Angels had been winning for a while, having knocked out a few of our members and kidnapped about half of our dart stash, but then Swift and Shadow had knocked Fang, Joey, Angel, and Nixie out of the game and we'd started making a comeback. After a while, though, I'd gotten into a boring stand-off with Iggy that resulted in us both ditching our teams to form a new one: Team Renegade. We'd gathered various other recruits and systematically eliminated most everyone else from the game. . .with the exceptions of Con, Sy, and, weirdly, Janey (I dunno, maybe she'd been too cute to shoot or something). The unholy trio had then practically destroyed my team in a well-planned basement ambush, and I'd barely escaped with but a single life left (everyone had started with five, and you lost lives depending on where you were hit). I'd fled upstairs to safety, and that's when you showed up, dearest reader.

Way to miss most of the action.

But back to the story.

"So you got her? We won?" Six-year-old Janey, the youngest of the entire group, was first up the stairs, dragging a three-foot-long gun behind her. It was practically as tall as she was, but hell, she'd been sniping people from the backyard for half an hour before anybody had realized what was going on. Maybe _that_ was how she'd survived so long - she'd stayed out of the way.

"Totally," Con said, smirking at her. "You were right, too. She was so focused on the basement stairs she didn't hear Sy go out the window and up the drainpipe." He held out his hand and Janey high-fived it, giggling.

I blinked. "Dammit! _That's_ what you did?" I demanded, rounding on Sy. I'd been wondering how he'd gotten upstairs without my notice.

"To be fair, I _was_ really quiet," he said, smiling. "So you probably wouldn't've heard me even _if_ you'd been listening."

I loaded another Nerf dart and shot him again.

"I can't believe you made us lose, Spark," said Iggy's voice. I glanced toward the basement stairs and saw he, the twins, and Frankie had all joined the party; so had Max, Blaze, Fang, Angel, Gazzy, Shadow, Nudge, and Swift. About half of them were either soaking wet or only partly wet. Apparently there'd been an impromptu pool party after the ambush.

"I mean, come on," he went on, shaking his hair to rid it of excess water. "First you ditched the rest of us to save yourself, then you just go and die on us anyway. Not cool."

"Hey. _You_ were the one who thought attacking the basement was a good idea," I retorted, pointing my gun at him. "So it's your fault we were ambushed in the first place. Besides, they set up a trap for me. You could've warned me when you heard them planning it."

"But I was dead."

"You could have made a dying proclamation."

"No he couldn't've," Frankie said, wringing out a corner of his shirt.

"Not on the floor!" Max said sharply as water spattered to the tile.

"Oops."

"They locked us in the pool room after killing us," Aqua explained, spinning her hat around her finger in an attempt to dry it faster. "We didn't hear them plan anything."

"Yeah, and since you ditched us there was no way you could've been around to hear any dying proclamations anyway," Arthur added, tapping the side of his head to get the water out of his ears.

". . .Dammit," I cursed. They were right, weren't they?

"Guys, guys, it does no good to argue about what _could_ have happened." We all turned as D.J., leading the rest of whoever else had been scattered upstairs, entered the living room and completed the congregation. He grinned and continued by saying, "All that matters is that Team Demon totally won this war."

"_Hell_ yeah," Shadow cried, pumping his fist. "Shotgun on electronics for a whole entire week!"

"Simmer down, short stuff," I said, shooting a Nerf dart at him. It went wide and totally missed him. "Since you were grounded from TV when this started, you've just gained back your regular privileges."

"What? Nu-uh!" he protested.

"She's right, kid," Blaze said. "And if I were you, I wouldn't argue it."

Shadow mumbled something that was probably a cuss, but otherwise let the matter drop.

"So what happened after I got out?" Aliza asked, looking around at the rest of us. "I wanna know why there are suddenly three teams instead of two."

Half a dozen conversations sprung up all at once as others started asking and telling about various parts of the war. Some of the more responsible kids (read: Max and Max alone) tried to get the others to start helping cleaning up, but it didn't get far. There were still Nerf darts and puddles of water everywhere by the time we called it quits and started winding down for the night. (We'd started the war at, like, seven o' clock, and it was now, like, nine.) The only thing anybody really bothered to do was gather up all the Nerf guns and various other Nerf weapons we'd been using, like a few swords and even a hatchet.*

It was during this round-up of weaponry that, like all those weeks ago on our first night in, I ended up in the basement with Sy. The only changes this time were that I was sitting well away from the water while he went diving for lost Nerf darts and the little green plastic discs that about half the guns could shoot.

His head broke the surface again and he shook his hair out, scattering droplets of water everywhere. Swimming to the pool's edge, he dropped four darts and two discs onto the pile of ammo he'd already fished out. "Why am I doing this again?" he asked, looking up at me.

"Because if we leave foam in the pool it will become soggy and useless," I told him. "Do you know how many darts we've already lost out in the backyard because the wind carried them too far? It's annoying having to keep buying new ones."

"What I mean is why am I doing this by _myself,_" he clarified. He smiled and tilted his head. "Don't you want to help me?"

"Not on your life, traitor," I pledged in a black voice. I swept my hand at the ammo pile and knocked a few green discs back into the pool in an act of rebellion.

Sy laughed and ducked down to catch the discs before they fell too far. Then he crossed his arms over the edge of the pool and looked up at me with those dark blue eyes of his.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing. This is just probably the longest we've ever been together without you getting kidnapped," he said mildly. "Or with one of us running away for some reason."

At first I just looked at him funny, but then I realized what he meant. Until we'd started living here with the others, the longest stint we'd ever spent within shouting distance of each other was. . .um. . .like, a few days? A week, at the most?

Wow. How had I never noticed that before? That was so weird, I. . .I guess so much had happened in so little time, it was just hard to put it all into perspective.

"Guess so."

Sy seemed to realize I was about to do some serious thinking, and so he flipped back under the water to continue the hunt for Nerf ammo, careful not to fling water at me with his tail as he went.

We'd moved in to the Santa Barbara house at the very beginning of October; prior to that, it'd been two weeks of flying around Australia in air-shows for the Coalition to Stop the Madness. Prior to _that,_ it'd been the giant hellish mess that was those other two narratives of mine. And prior to _that,_ I'd been attempting to live a semi-normal life with my adopted-but-really-blood-related family.

From boredom to hell to super-hell to this. And. . .what _was_ this, exactly?

It was almost November, and so far, we'd accomplished nothing by living in Santa Barbara. And I guess that had kind-of been the point: after all we'd been through, we wanted normal, peaceful lives. And when I say normal and peaceful, I mean as normal as we can be and peaceful as in not fearing for the safety of our lives on a daily basis. Because believe me, there had been some crazy days this past month. Like the week a bunch of us had smuggled animals into the house to see if Max would notice, and that other weekend when Sy had saved a drowner and been mistaken for a real-life mermaid. (Mer_maid,_ not mer_man,_ which just gave Con endless amusement.) Twice we'd had Random Clothing Wars, when tempers had flared as some force of the universe had set up a single day when absolutely everybody needed the washing machine and dryer all at the same time. And we'd even had a house-wide _I Love Lucy_ marathon when we'd realized the main TV's DVR had mysteriously recorded every single episode that had been aired in the last two years since the house had been built.

And that had all been great and everything, but what were we supposed to do now? We had our whole lives ahead of us to do whatever the hell we wanted. I knew it was only a matter of time before Max or some other misguided soul suggested the idea of school, and there was a high probability of us going once it'd been suggested. I mean, what _else_ were we supposed to do? Get jobs? Fat chance, only Con was really old enough for anything good. And not many people would hire kids who'd never been to an actual school.

Besides, it's not like we _needed_ to work. According to Sy, finances were totally fine. He'd explained it all to me once, but I'd only been half-paying attention. It involved something with his mom's savings account transferring to a different account under his name, and. . .yeah, I don't really remember all of what he said. But basically, we had money, and we weren't going to need more anytime soon. (In spite of all of their other evildoings, Itex sure paid their henchmen well.)

So. To sum up, we've goofed off for a month, and we have nothing much else to do.

Well. That is, the _others_ don't.

My family is still in Colorado, and, well. . .technically they didn't know I was available to come home. I'd only contacted them once since I last saw my dad in Miami, before we'd gone to Australia. And that time, I'd just used a pay phone to leave a message on the machine. They knew I was alive and okay, at least. I just never said anything about when I was coming home.

Because, well. . .to be perfectly honest. . .I kinda didn't want to. Not only would it mean a whole _bunch_ of shit to clean up from how Itex had meddled to make sure I _couldn't_ go home, but it would also probably mean abandoning everyone here. My parents' house was a two-story, four-bedroom place, there was no room for all of us.

Plus, Mom and Dad probably wouldn't be entirely thrilled to know that there were multiple pairings living under the same roof. And that I was part of one of those pairings.

I shook my head to clear it of all thoughts of just how bad I'd get yelled at for living unsupervised with my boyfriend. Not to mention all the other teenage guys who were no doubt sex-driven deviants only intent upon. . .well, doing what it is that sex-driven deviants do.

Going home would just screw everything up. But I owed it to my family to go back. They'd missed me, and they still thought I was just their adopted daughter, not the real one that'd been taken from them all those years ago. They needed to know that we were a true family. That's not just something you can say over a voicemail.

And, maybe the biggest reason of all. . .there's simply just a huge difference between physically _knowing_ your loved one's alive and only _hearing_ that your loved one's alive.

I'd have to go back. I knew that. But dammit, it'd been so long. Most people back home thought I was dead, for cryin' out loud. And how could I tell all my friends here that I was leaving them to go back to my real family, and that chances were my parents wouldn't let me out of their sight long enough to see them again?

God, why did families have to be so confusing.

I twitched and jerked back as a stream of water splashed me in the face. I dragged my sleeve across my eyes and saw Sy with his hands held in that way you hold them when you're trying to squirt water at somebody.

"What was that for?" I asked, still drying off my cheeks. As soon as I was done, however, he just did it again. I spluttered and scooted back, wiping water out of my eyes. "Hey!"

"Come on, smile," Sy said, half-smiling himself. "You're not supposed to be thinking about stuff that makes you sad. This house is a no-sad zone."

"What makes you think I was sad?" I demanded. "I could have been thinking about unicorns for all you know."

"Well, if you were, the unicorns were dying."

I cracked a smirk and he returned it. Then, becoming serious once more, Sy asked, "What was it you were really thinking about?"

"Just. . .stuff," I said lamely. "About my family."

"Like what?" he prodded, resting his chin on the arms he'd folded across the pool's edge. His shimmery silver fish's tail lazily beat the water while I thought about an answer.

"Just. . .stuff," I said again. "I can't decide what to do. Whether I should go back or not."

"Permanently, or just temporarily?"

"Either," I said, throwing my hands in the air. "Thing is, I don't know. I mean, I know I _should_ go back, but doing that would mean I choose them over you guys. And if I stay here, that's like choosing you guys over them. I don't see a way where I can have both."

Sy was quiet for a while, but eventually said, "I don't think you have to choose just yet. I mean, it's only been a little while."

I gave him a look. "Like _you_ could go three months without any contact from me?"

"That's not the point." He pushed himself up halfway out of the water, leaning heavily on the edge of the pool. Staring at me intensely, he said, "Tell me something. Is this the first time you've started thinking about this?"

"Well. . .kinda," I admitted, shifting guiltily. Like I could just _lie_ when he looked at me like that. "First time in a while, at least."

"If that's the case, then of course you're not going to see a good way out just yet," he said reasonably. "Give yourself time to think about it. And then when you _really_ come to the point when you don't think there's any way to have both, then. . .we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Okay?"

I shrugged a shoulder. "Better than my plan."

"I didn't think you had a plan."

"Which is why yours is better," I replied, and I flashed him a grin. He smiled.

"That's better," he said, and he leaned forward to give me a light kiss on the cheek. "No more sad."

"Well, maybe no sad, but still mad," I said. Before he could even ask what I was talking about, I pushed him away and he fell back into the water with a huge splash. Quickly, I scrambled to my feet and kicked out at the pile of plastic green discs, scattering them back into the pool.

Sy found the surface again and stared at me. "What was that for?"

"You made me lose the war, Sy!" I laughed as he came back to the surface. "You think I can just _forgive_ you for that?"

"Hey, you turned traitor without me!" he said in his defense. I stuck my tongue out at him and he smirked. "Fine then."

I stopped, recognizing that devilish glint in his eye. "Sy. . ."

He raised his hand, which was suddenly glowing. A huge wave of water rose up, and before I could run Sy threw the water at me and used it to drag me into the pool, laughing and thrashing.

Sy seems to have a fondness for pushing people in pools. Namely, me. And sometimes Con. Normally I'd try to get back at him for it, but this time, I think I'll let it slide. After all, I _did_ initiate combat by pushing him. And he was only doing it to cheer me up (I think), and whether or not that was his intention, it happened anyway. All thoughts about the problem that was my family just flew right out of my head.

And I know that makes me sound like a totally horrible person, but hey, why don't _you_ try thinking about depressing things when someone's aquatically assaulting you with plastic mini-frisbees of death. Seriously, those things hurt like a mo-fo if you flung 'em right.

Besides. I had all the time in the world to puzzle over the depressing stuff. Who said I had to do it right this second?

* * *

*yes, there is such a thing as a nerf hatchet. it's called the nerf n-force klaw hatchet. item #19663 on the /nerf site. and yes, i did take the time to look up the various nerf guns on the market.

re-uploading this bitch because this bitch of a site was a bitch and deleted it (like a bitch) because i used the word "bitch" in the summary.

bitch.


	2. Chapter 2

fanfiction has changed its layout.

i don't like it.

my laptop has a huge screen, which didn't used to be a problem, but with this stupid new layout there are just bars of empty space at both ends of the page.

ALL OF THAT SPACE. WASTED.

but the cover thing is nice, though. now you can all see the wonderful drawing of Spark that verlidaine did.

disclaimer: blah. you know i don't own max ride.

* * *

_**2. ah, the irony**_

"Holy. Freaking. Banana-eating _CHRIST!_"

Sy, the twins, Frankie, Swift and I all flinched at the sound of Blaze's shout, then froze as the floor and coffee table shook from her stomps. To be clear, it wasn't Blaze we were afraid of - we were just trying to build the biggest house of cards ever and we didn't want it all to fall down.

Thankfully, it didn't, and we all breathed sighs of relief in directions well away from the cards.

Blaze's ominous stomping left the kitchen and cut through the other room before she stood in the doorway to the living room, where our giant card-mansion was being constructed. I glanced at her and did a double-take: she was holding about five or six different cartons of juice. I stared, and one by one the others turned to stare too.

She just glared at us, eyes glinting silver in that weird way that they did whenever she got angry. She was just _daring_ somebody to ask what was going on, and for a few seconds, nobody wanted to. It would incite wrath of such ferocity that we'd _never_ get back to building our card house.

Then again, we couldn't go back to building until she went away, either. . .

"Did the juice decide to throw a coup against the soda?" I finally ventured.

"No," she snapped. Blaze opened her arms, allowing the cartons to fall to the floor; I feared the vibrations of the fall would harm the card-mansion, but judging from the sound the cartons were all empty and therefore harmless. "They're outmatched."

"Well, obviously," Frankie answered her, putting down his cards. "I mean, who really can defeat the awesomeness of Mountain Dew? Certainly not _orange juice._ It's too much of a pansy."

"That's not what I meant, dumbass!" Blaze said. She kicked one of the juice cartons and sent it flying across the room.

(Again I feared for the cards, but not even the air disturbance of a flying carton could bring it down.)

"Thirty kids in this house, and not _one_ of them knows how to throw away a freaking empty bottle!" Blaze ranted.

Aqua and Arthur, turning away from Blaze and picking up where they'd left off, pointed out in unison, "That's a carton."

Blaze scowled. "Same difference!"

"Not really," they contradicted. I rolled my eyes and started on another level of the house.

"Bottles are usually cylindrical, and made of glass or plastic," Aqua explained.

"Cartons, on the other hand, are usually rectangular and made of cardboard," said Arthur.

"It doesn't matter," Blaze retorted. "The rule is you throw away whatever you finish! You would think I wouldn't have this problem every week!"

"You would think," Frankie agreed. Blaze glared at him and he held up his hands. "What? It wasn't me."

"Of course it wasn't," she said sarcastically. "It was those damn juice gremlins again, wasn't it?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Blaze," I chided. "Gremlins don't live in the suburbs. It was probably a gnome or a hobgoblin."

Frankie snickered. "But we can't exactly rule out the possibility of a fairy, either."

"What about a leprechaun?" Sy suggested, carefully adding another set of cards to one of the mansion's watch-towers.

"It's not their season," I told him.

"What's the difference between a normal goblin and a hobgoblin*?" Aqua asked.

"UGH!" Blaze shrieked in frustration and kicked another carton. We all cringed as it flew across the room, then half-gasped as a pair of cards fell over. Nothing else collapsed, however, so Swift carefully fixed the break and continued on with building a tower in the empty inner courtyard of the structure.

(It was a very elaborate house of cards.)

"Blaze? Chill," I said warningly. "So what if somebody was too lazy to throw away an empty bottle?"

"Carton," Arthur corrected.

"Whatever. Is it really that big of a deal?" I asked.

"Yes!" she replied fiercely. "Because it happens _all the time._ Every time we come back from shopping, we try to fit everything into the fridge, but nothing freaking fits because there's too much crap in there already! So, yeah, when I find out half the bottles-"

"Cartons," Aqua corrected.

"What_ever!_ When I find out that half the _cartons_ are empty, I get pissed!"

I sighed. Sure, we'd all grown up living with other people, but none of us had ever really lived with so _many_ others before. It was startling just how easily tempers could flare under the conditions. The trick was to catch the problem early and resolve it before the rest of the house was sucked into the matter and the entire place was turned into a war zone.

"Blaze, just relax. For now, we'll throw the cartons away, and later, you can bring it back up when everyone sits down for dinner," I suggested. "If nobody fesses up, Angel will just tell us who's doing it. Just yelling at a few of us isn't going to get anything done, especially when the few of us you're yelling at didn't have anything to do with it. Right?"

"I think the majority of those of us here are pop drinkers," Frankie said.

"Exactly. So take a chill pill and come build the most epic house of cards ever built in the history of the world."

Blaze eyed me suspiciously. "But someone's going to have to go to the store soon."

"Yeah, yeah, just sit down," I said impatiently. "Build now, shop later."

After a few more seconds of indecision, she gave up on the carton problem and gingerly knelt down next to me. I smirked to myself as she picked up some cards and started building.

_Hell yeah,_ I thought. Problem solved, crisis averted. Point to Spark.

"How many packs of cards are we _using,_ anyway?" Blaze eventually asked.

"Uh, three so far," Sy said.

"And I think there are two more scattered in these piles," I added, gesturing to the stacks of cards placed strategically around the edges of the coffee table.

There was a small stint of silence after that, during which the card mansion stopped being a mansion and started being a castle. It was truly magnificent: the layers of cards alternated between red-backed cards and blue-backed cards, and every once in a while there was even a layer of face-out cards. There was one low tower in the "courtyard," and there were four others at the corners of the structure. There was even a moat in the form of the circular cards we'd found in a drawer in the kitchen - we'd just laid them out around the castle's perimeter.

We had come to a lull in the construction as we puzzled over what to do next - after all, there was still another pack of cards left - when the unthinkable happened.

_"OW!"_

The cry rang through the house and made everybody jump. Someone's knee bumped the table and the whole card-castle suddenly fell in one great _fwoosh._

There was a collective, despairing cry of "NOOO!", followed by some rather colorful cursing.

But it would seem that we weren't the only ones upset. Oh, no. The shouting from upstairs was far, far worse. And it wasn't too hard to discern why.

Amid the variations of "OW! God, _fuck!_ Ow! What the hell! Shit!", there was, for some reason, the faint sound of snapping, as if dozens upon dozens of mousetraps were going off. I looked around for the giveaway, and found it on the twins: out of everyone in the room, they were the only ones who weren't surprised and/or curiously looking around.

They seemed to sense my gaze, and after a second they both smiled. I checked my watch and saw it was just a little after noon.

"Free game," I noted.

After about a week of about half of us sleeping until past noon - and by "half" I really mean me, Con, Kyla, Eugene, Wave, the twins, and D.J. - Max had tried to make sure everyone was up by at least nine o' clock. And after that had failed epically in the form of Con almost beheading her with a thrown lamp, it became the rule of the house that you just couldn't sleep past noon, and that you couldn't assault anybody who tried to wake you up before that.

_After_ twelve, though, you were automatically free game for pranks. In the past, this had included pool dumps, water-balloon bombs, duct-taping to mattresses, tossing _of_ mattresses, attack by small hyperactive children, and now, apparently, live mouse traps.

Poor, poor Con. . .

"So how many did you guys put down?" I asked the twins conversationally, raising my voice over the sounds of Con's cursing. "And where?"

"Can't remember," Aqua said carelessly. "A lot."

"A lot of _what?_" Frankie asked, sounding clueless. "What's that snapping?"

"Mouse traps," Swift said.

_"Mouse traps?"_ Frankie echoed incredulously.

"Ooh, that's gotta hurt," Blaze chuckled.

"We put them all over his floor," said Arthur as he slowly picked up cards from the ruined castle. "And in the hall, too."

"How'd you know he'd sleep past noon?" Sy inquired, also starting the clean-up.

"He was up past one playing Halo with us," Aqua explained.

"It was pretty much inevitable," Arthur added.

There was a pause in the cursing and snapping and we all stopped, listening for more. Then there was one final _crack!_ followed by a howl of pain. And then:

"What the. . .vengeance _my ass!_"

_Vengeance?_ It took me a second, but then I realized what had happened. "Wait. Did you take my Easter traps?" I demanded indignantly.

"Only for some of them," Aqua admitted.

"The rest we went out and bought," Arthur added.

"You mean you needed _more_ than twenty?" Sadistic little thieves, just how many did they lay down?

"You have _mouse traps_ for _Easter?_" Blaze asked disbelievingly.

"Uh, duh. Haven't you ever heard of the Mouse of Easter Vengeance**?"

She wasn't the only one who looked confused and/or unnerved. Which wasn't surprising, because most people had similar reactions upon learning of the notorious Vengeance Mouse.

"I'm almost afraid to ask," Frankie said slowly.

I sighed impatiently. "Okay, well since the Easter Bunny goes around hiding eggs, he has a cousin who-"

_"Spark."_

I stopped mid-sentence and suppressed a shudder. I'd forgotten just how dangerous Con could sound, and when I turned around I realized I'd forgotten just how dangerous he could look, too. His gray eyes were narrow and dark, and his jet-black hair was sticking up from where he'd slept on it funny. I felt like any second he would lose it and just mind-torture me - not even the Batman pajama bottoms could detract from the black mood emanating from him.

I looked down and saw that his bare feet were scored with bright red welts. _Man_ was I glad I'd accidentally woken up early today.

Con held up a mouse trap and said, very clearly and angrily, "You will die for this."

"Wha - why are you looking at _me?_" I protested. "I didn't do it!"

In response, he chucked the mouse trap at me. It bounced off the floor and landed on the coffee table, skittering across it and knocking the ruins of our card-castle to the floor. The trap was painted a pale purple and had a blue-and-pink Easter egg on it, too, with the word "VENGEANCE!" written across it in bright red.

The twins were trying not to laugh, and even Swift was smirking a little.

I lifted my chin and looked away. "This proves nothing."

"Bullshit," he growled.

"For your information, someone stole them from me," I informed him. I quickly busied myself by helping the others gather up the cards - faster it was put away, faster I could _get_ away. (Why is it that I have to run away to avoid punishment for something I didn't even do? Such is the life of the notorious me.)

"And it's your own fault, anyway," I pointed out. "You slept past noon."

"It's only twelve-oh-five," he spat.

"Exactly," I said. "Six minutes ago and this never would have happened."

He growled again and turned to stalk back upstairs to his precious man-cave of a bedroom. Just as he was about to leave, though, Aqua spoke up and made him stop dead.

"You know, Con," she began conversationally, "the later you stay up, the later you sleep in."

"It's funny, too," Arthur continued. "Time spent up almost directly equates to time spent sleeping in."

"Since you usually fall asleep around midnight and sleep at _least_ 'til ten, then every hour you stay up past twelve becomes an hour you sleep past ten."

"If _only_ you'd known that. You could've prevented being taken advantage of in such a painfully hilarious manner."

In the time it took for the twins to banter and for Con to piece together the truth, Swift, Blaze, Frankie, Sy and I had picked up the rest of the cards from our card-castle and begun sorting them into their respective decks. In fact, Swift had been so quick about putting together his deck that he'd already fled the scene, heading downstairs for the safety of the basement.

It finally hit Con that it was the twins who were the cause behind his pain, and he took one threatening step toward them before they laughed and ran off for the basement, disturbing Blaze's abandoned juice cartons as they went.

Finishing off my own deck of cards, I stuffed them in their box and glanced over at the scattered cartons. "Guess we might as well go get recruits now," I commented. Frankie looked up to see what I was looking at and snickered.

Con just looked irritably confused. "What?"

"Well, the juice isn't equipped to throw a coup against the other drinkables in this house," I explained. "We need to even the playing field, you see."

He just stared at me. "What?"

"We need stuff from the store," Blaze clarified with a roll of her eyes.

"Oh." Con paused, seeming to think over something for a second, and then asked, "It's not my turn to go, is it?"

"Well, it's not supposed to be, but you made me go instead of you last time," I reminded him. "So, since it's supposed to be my turn, it's your turn."

We had a system, see, for grocery shopping. Since we had twenty-seven kids and one small dog all in one house, and since those twenty-seven kids and one small dog were all mutant hybrids, we went through food pretty damn quick. However, the same people going to the store to buy huge quantities of food every few days would seem suspicious, so instead we paired off and went in turns.

Con hesitated. "I'm still tired enough to not understand you. I'm gonna guess that I don't have to go."

_"Ehh!"_ I buzzed like a game show and he winced. "Wrong."

"Dammit," he cursed. Then he sighed, running his hand through his already-messy hair. "Well, do I have to go _now?_"

"Might as well," Frankie said, standing up and stretching. "It's just about lunchtime. Anybody who hasn't already eaten will soon realize there's nothing to drink."

"And may God forbid the day we have to go back to drinking _water_ from the _tap,_" Blaze said. Frankie grinned. "Besides, there's other stuff we need, too, like for dinner or whatever."

"Fine," Con groaned. "Who do I have to go with?"

I glanced at Sy and shrugged. He rolled his eyes - usually it was us who went out together, but since I'd gone with Kyla and Wave last time, he and Con were stuck together. And though they'd stopped openly hating each other since the whole Leander thing, they weren't exactly besties for life.

"Me, I guess," Sy said reluctantly.

"Joy," Con said acidly. "It's like the perfect morning."

"It's actually afternoon," I corrected.

"Shut it."

* * *

Grocery shopping, Con reflected, was probably his least-favorite out of all the chores. Not only was he forced to waste two hours shuffling around gathering various foodstuffs, but he was also forced to do it in the company of people he didn't particularly like. Usually it was Kyla and Wave, who were actually okay on their own, but when they were together they were almost as bad as those stupid twins.

"Will you come on? We don't have all day."

And then there was Sy.

Con opened his eyes and straightened up. Stifling a yawn, he pushed the cart after Sy, turning it down yet another wide aisle of the local Wal-Mart. To be fair, Con knew he could tolerate Sy if need be - like if they were on the same team for a Nerf war - but for the most part he tried to keep contact with him to a minimum. He'd spent a good part of his life hearing rumors about the Salt Lake Lab's golden boy, and Sy had messed with far too many of Con's previous plans for him to ever really like him. Plus, considering the time they'd spent together in that room at Leander's, Con would be relatively happy to not have to talk to Sy for another year. Maybe even two.

Con came to a halt and slouched over the cart as Sy started inspecting various breakfast cereals. The fish hybrid seemed perfectly content to ignore Con as much as Con ignored him, though their behavior baffled everyone else in the house. It did no good to explain, either, because the subject almost always ended up going back to Leander.

And that was something not even Con cared to think about.

"Wake up," Sy said, and Con jumped as he dropped a box into the cart. "We've still got a lot of stuff to get."

Con rolled his eyes and grudgingly followed. He didn't get far, however, because about halfway down the aisle Sy stopped suddenly.

It was with great restraint that Con didn't ram the cart at his ankles.

"If you're gonna randomly stop like that, then tell me," he snapped, wheeling the cart around Sy. He expected Sy to retort, or at least turn the subject back to what they needed to get, but nothing of the sort happened. He didn't even follow Con as he continued on down the aisle. Upon realizing this, Con stopped and looked back. "What are you doing?"

Sy didn't answer; he was just standing there, paused in the middle of the aisle, looking confused.

Con abandoned the cart and took a cautious step toward him. "Uh, Sy?"

Sy blinked and sort-of twitched, and then he looked up at Con.

_With ruby red eyes._

Con froze, his insides going cold and his chest getting tight.

". . .Shit."

* * *

*really, there _is_ no difference. goblins and hobgoblins are basically the same thing, except hobgoblins are kinda nicer.

**the easter bunny has a cousin, you see, a rather large mouse that is probably called preston. and while preston loves his cousin for leaving wonderful little eggs around for small children to find, he absolutely hates the teenagers who try cash in on the bunny's kindness. so every easter, preston follows the easter bunny around and hides mouse traps in places that older kids will be sure to look. in this way, the greedy teenage bastards looking for eggs will instead be punished for trying to take the easter bunny's gifts away from their younger siblings. such is the tale of the mouse of easter vengeance.

^ totally made this up, by the way. sounds like something my family would do, though.

i don't wanna upload this all at one time, so it's gonna be a chapter a day for the next, like, what. . .two weeks? and hopefully by then i'll have finished off the newest chapter and will have it ready to post.

that is, if tumblr hasn't destroyed my life by then.


	3. Chapter 3

i still can't believe nobody commented on the fact that Con wears Batman pajama bottoms.

you people. no priorities.

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride

* * *

_**3. sublet**_

It didn't seem as though Dylan had quite realized what was going on. And to be perfectly honest, Con didn't really know what was happening either.

There hadn't been any warning signs of a switch. Sy had been acting normal, he'd been calm. He wasn't trying to manipulate water, and Spark wasn't in danger, and Con wasn't (intentionally) making him angry. And yet there Dylan was, suddenly in control, his ruby-red eyes staring out at the world. Or at least at the cereal aisle of Wal-Mart.

Dylan blinked and everything snapped into place for him. His eyes locked on Con for a second, and then he started to turn away, ready to run. Con saw it coming, though, and leapt down the aisle just before Dylan could disappear. He managed to grab hold of Dylan's wrist, but he twisted and almost got away. Con tightened his grip and yanked Dylan around, sending him crashing into a shelf of cereal. Two boxes of Berry Berry Kix hit Dylan's head as they fell to the floor. Con balled up his fist, ready to knock him out, but then. . .

_"Leave me alone!"_

Con winced as Dylan's voice cracked into a higher register. People at either end of the aisle looked their way in curiosity, but for the most part Con ignored them. Dylan was squirming again, desperately scrabbling at his fingers in a frantic attempt to pry Con's hand off his own wrist.

"Let go, let go!" he pleaded, sounding pathetically like a crying child. "C'mon, please, just let go!"

Con stared in bewilderment. This was a full-scale, freak-out meltdown, something he'd never seen Dylan - or, for that matter, Sy - ever, _ever_ do. He kept babbling incoherently, his breathing short and shallow; more and more he was looking like a panicked animal caught in a trap. The various onlookers at either end of the aisle started looking concerned, but after one glare from Con they quickly went back to minding their own business.

In the moment it took for him to glare at the other shoppers, Con's grip slackened. Dylan seized the opportunity to jerk his arm free, abandoning his act and whirling away. He'd managed to run to the end of the aisle before Con caught up to him again, once again snatching his arm and yanking him back. Immediately Dylan tried to shake him off, but all Con had to do was think of pain.

"Dammit!" Dylan swore loudly, his free hand flying up to hold his head. Con ended whatever painful memory his ability had brought up and waited for an explanation.

After taking a few seconds to compose himself, Dylan took a deep breath and calmed down. "Well, can't blame me for trying," he said dully, rolling his eyes.

"What are you doing here?" Con demanded.

"I don't _know,_" Dylan said, sounding sullen. "I was just minding my own business, and all of a sudden here I am." He shook his arm once, trying to wave Con off. "Let go, will ya?"

Instead, Con just tightened his hold, making Dylan wince. "Not a chance," he snapped. "You'll run."

"And why is that a bad thing?" he asked, glaring at Con like he didn't understand why he was being held captive. "It's obvious that I'm not wanted, so if you just let me go I'll be on my merry way."

Con's jaw clenched. All right, so he didn't like Sy, but Dylan was definitely way worse. It was his fault that they'd been kidnapped to go to the London conference all those weeks ago. And it wasn't like he'd just let them be on the journey over - he'd tormented them, especially Spark. Plus, he'd been no help _at all_ during the Leander fiasco. For all the ten seconds he'd been in control, all he'd done was kick in a stupid door. Ass.

And it wasn't just Con. _Nobody_ liked Dylan. How could they? He was a cocky, arrogant, self-centered jerk who wouldn't even think twice about selling his own grandmother into slavery if that's what it took to get ahead. At least Sy was nice. Sometimes sickeningly so, but trustworthy nonetheless. And he had this weird knack for getting rid of problems, too. Arguments, fights, even nightmares; given enough time, Sy could make it all go away. He even had the sense to not mention it, too.

Oh, crap. They were _friends,_ weren't they?

Con blinked and shook himself. No time to think about whether he and Sy were. . .you know. He had other things to worry about.

Like Spark. She was going to _flip_ when she found out this had happened.

"There's nothing out here for you," he told Dylan forcefully. "So go away and let Sy come back."

Dylan smirked. "What makes you think he wants to come back?" Then he winced as Con tightened his grip. "Ow."

"I don't have _time_ to waste on douchebags like you. So _go away._"

"What, you think we tag-team this or something? I can't control it. Ah!" He yelped as Con tried to twist his wrist.

"Don't. Lie," Con snarled through clenched teeth. First they'd switched, and then Con had had to realize Sy was his. . ._friend,_ and now Dylan was back-sassing him. All of it together was just enough to make his temper rise dangerously close to the boiling point. "I know that in the past he's been able to feel you there, so you can feel him, too. So switch. _Back._"

"I can't switch if _he's not there!_" Dylan protested.

That made Con hesitate. "What d'you mean?" he asked slowly.

"I can't just go back if he's not here to take over!" Dylan explained impatiently. "It's not like some car you park on the street, someone always has to be in control, that's just how it works!"

"What d'you mean by he's not there? Where is he?"

Dylan just stared at him. "He went off to Starbucks to get a latte. What makes you think I know?"

"Because you're usually in there! Just. . .when you're not out here, where are you?"

"I don't know, just. . .somewhere. It's hard to explain. Nn!" He winced as Con dug his nails into his wrist. "Quit _doing_ that!"

"I don't care how hard it is," he began, and Dylan gave a wicked smirk.

"That's what - ah!" This time Con twisted his wrist so hard he cried out, attracting more curious looks from other shoppers. Ignoring them, Con dragged Dylan further down the aisle, away from the onlookers.

_"Explain."_

"All right, geez," Dylan said. Then he took a breath. "Okay. When I'm not out here, I'm in here." He pointed to his temple. "I'm just. . .in some part of his mind that's this dark, black little room. And I'm just there by myself, okay, with my own thoughts and my own. . .whatever. On occasion, words and thoughts and even pictures start to drift back, and I get an idea of what's going on out here. And when he gets really weak, this window opens up and I can, you know, see and hear what's going on. And as time goes on, the window gets bigger and less thick and I can break through, if I want. And we switch places."

"So. . .Sy's back in that. . .room."

Dylan half-shrugged. "Presumably."

"But. . .why'd you switch?" Con asked. "What started coming back to you in that room that made you want to break out?"

"That's the thing! Nothing was going on!" the red-eyed hybrid snapped back. "I was just there, okay, barely even aware of myself, and then all of a sudden I'm out here, being manhandled by a bird!" He once again tried to shake Con's grip from his wrist.

_Shit._ This was bad. From the sounds of it, Dylan may have been locked away so tight that he might've started to fade out of Sy's consciousness entirely. But if _Dylan_ was out here, and _Sy_ was the one back in there, then wouldn't the same thing happen, given enough time? Would Sy. . .disappear?

Making a decision, Con tugged on Dylan's arm and started heading for the exit. "Come on."

"What? Ah!" Dylan staggered as Con dragged him along. "Where are we _going?_"

"Back to the house," he said shortly. "We need to figure this out."

"Fine. But let me go already, I can walk on my own."

"No, see, I don't know that," Con said irritably. "As far as I know, you're planning to run to Canada as soon as I drop my guard."

"Canada?" Dylan echoed. Then he scoffed. "Please. If anything I'd go to Mexico. It's a lot warmer there this time of year, anyway, and-" He stopped short as Con whipped around and glared at him.

"Jokes aside, you and I both know that I'm not going to let you go, because you and I both know that you're going to run as soon as I do," Con said evenly. Dylan blinked, seeming to realize for the first time that he was being serious.

"You said it yourself," he replied quietly, averting his gaze. "There's nothing out here for me. Why would I run, there's no point."

"Even so. I'm going to tell you something, _Dylan._" The alter looked up at him and Con smirked. "If by some fluke you _do_ manage to run, we will hunt you down, and we will find you. And I'm not just talking about Spark because you've taken her boyfriend's body, or even the other fish kids because you've taken their brother's. _I_ will hunt you down, and _I_ will torture you until your mind breaks, again and again, until there aren't any pieces left to even give Sy a headache. Do you understand me?"

For a second, a flicker of doubt danced across Dylan's ruby irises. Then he half-smiled. "I had no idea you felt this strongly about us, Constantine. It's almost endearing."

"Ha." Con turned away. "Don't flatter yourself. I just hate you more than I hate him."

* * *

The door to the garage opened and shut rather violently. Confused, I looked at Iggy, who was helping me do dishes. He just shrugged wordlessly and went back to washing.

Usually runs to the store took longer than this. _Way_ longer than this. So unless Con and Sy had caused some sort of catastrophic occurrence in Housewares, they should've still been gone.

I sincerely hoped they hadn't been banned from Wal-Mart. Though I'd only be mildly surprised if they had.

"Syyy?" I called. "Con? Why're you back so early?"

"We had a problem," Con snapped back. "Get in here." Then he raised his voice to a yell. "Kyla? Wave? Get down here!"

"You better not've gotten banned from Wal-Mart." Not even taking time to put down the glass pan I'd been drying, I quickly walked across the other room and rounded the corner. I spotted Sy on the couch, elbow on its arm, head in his hand. "Sy, what's wrong?"

It took a second, but eventually he looked at me.

My hands went limp and the pan slipped right out of my grip; I flinched as it shattered on the tiled floor, sending glass shards and water droplets everywhere.

No. Just. . ._no._ This can't be happening. _This can't be happening._

Dylan half-smiled. "Smooth."

I froze up. I'd last seen those eyes on the _Princess Andromeda_, after all us bird-kids had tried (and failed) to escape it before we got to London. After that, Con and I had done the unthinkable in order to make him go away. And since then, he'd been gone.

_So why. Why is he here? Why is this happening? What's going on?_

"What was that?" Iggy came to investigate the source of the crash, and he would've walked right over the broken glass if Dylan hadn't said anything.

"You might want to stay back," he said lazily. "She dropped the pan."

Iggy went still. Of course, being blind, he couldn't see that Sy's eyes had turned, but even so, he seemed to realize something was off. Like he could hear a difference between Sy's voice and the voice he'd just heard.

"Crap," he muttered.

"Con," I said warily. "What the _fuck_ happened at that store?"

Con was pacing, looking more wound-up than I'd seen him in a while. "If I knew, I would've dealt with it, and wouldn't be screaming for help," he said shortly. He disappeared for a second as he went down the front hall, heading for the stairs. "KYLA! WAVE! Get down here _right_ now!"

Nobody could've ignored him with the way he sounded. Seconds after Con had stalked back into the living room, Kyla and Wave were rushing to see what was wrong.

"Geez, what's with the volume, Con?" Kyla asked, looking nervous. "Someone die?"

After a second's hesitation, Con replied with, "I don't know how to answer that."

Wave's eyebrows jumped up in alarm. "Okay, what the hell is wrong? You're kinda freaking me - oh my God!" Her hands flew to her mouth as she looked at and recognized Dylan. It took a moment but Kyla saw him too, and she gasped.

Dylan scowled. "Oh, _that's_ polite," he sneered. "You two see these eyes every day in the mirror, I don't know why you're making such a big deal about it."

"Oh, my. . .Sy, what happened?" Kyla asked, her voice small.

"Okay, first of all, it's Dylan, apparently. And second of all, quit looking at me like I got mauled by a shark. We just switched, that's all."

"Yeah, _that's all,_" Con spat. "He doesn't know how it happened and he doesn't know where Sy is, either."

Dylan rolled his eyes like it wasn't important. I just stared at him. What did that even mean, he doesn't know where Sy is? Did it mean. . .was Sy. . ._gone?_ Not forever, surely. Oh, God, please not forever. Life has sucked enough as it is, I can't lose Sy too.

"That's not good," Wave said.

Con just stared at her. Then he passed a shaking hand over his face. ". . .Y-you know, I, I-I just can't, right now, okay? I just can't waste time being sarcastic about your stupidity. So if you could just not be stupid, that'd be great."

I blinked. Con sounded about as freaked as I felt. Which was weird, because Con and Sy didn't generally seem to like each other. Unless they were secret friends behind my back or something.

"H-how did this happen?" I asked, finally finding my voice.

"I already said that we don't know," Con said. "He just randomly appeared."

"So. . .what does that mean?" Iggy asked slowly. "What are we going to do?"

I involuntarily glanced at Con, whose mouth twitched in a frown. Pointedly ignoring my gaze, he turned to Kyla and Wave again. "Did this ever happen to either of you? Where the red just came out of nowhere with no warning?"

"Well. . .I don't _think_ so," Kyla said uncertainly.

"Are you sure?"

"We can't remember," Wave admitted helplessly. "A lot of it's just a big blur."

Con sighed irritably, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Dammit. I didn't want to do this."

Okay. I knew what probably had to come next, but that didn't mean I actually had to do it. There could be another way. There _had_ to be another way. Right? Please? Maybe?

Dylan chuckled like he could read my mind. "This'll be fun."

"Quiet!" Con snapped at him as he started to walk toward me.

I automatically started backing up. "No."

He stopped and rolled his eyes. "Don't do this. You and I _both_ know that-"

"Don't. Say it. There could be another way," I protested. He didn't look convinced. "There wasn't time to think last time! If we really thought about, I know we could find another way."

"What's the big deal? Spark, you know-" I jumped over the pile of broken glass that was still on the floor and darted past him. He whirled around in bewilderment. "What are you _doing?_"

"Running!"

This may seem childish and stubborn and whatnot, but hey. Now that the shock of seeing stupid Dylan had worn off, I was starting to think again. Unlike back on the ship, we had all the time in the world to figure out everything. Why they'd switched, if switching was just inevitable and random, and, most importantly, how to force Sy to come back. Preferably without resorting to drastic measures.

There was time to think. We didn't have to do it _right this second._ I mean, I wanted Dylan gone, but I wanted to be absolutely sure that there was no other possible way of getting Sy back first. Then and only then would I open the Con door and kiss him.

"Block her!" Con ordered, and, though confused, Kyla and Wave obeyed, blocking the way to the front hall and stairs. I turned around and went back the way I came, dodging Con and leaping again over the broken glass.

"What's going on?" Iggy asked, turning his head toward me as I fled for the basement. It was really close, but Con was right behind me. Plus, the basement was kind-of a dead end. . .huh. Didn't think that one through. I hung a left and stopped behind the far end of the dining table.

"She's being a brat," Con snarled, glaring at me from the other side of the room. I scowled right back.

"You _really_ wanna open that door?" I asked fiercely.

"Look, we know it works, and the sooner they switch back, the better!" he protested. "I don't know why you think it's such a big deal!"

I stuck my tongue out at him.

He frowned. "You know, some people would be offended by the way you're acting."

"Good thing you're not some people." I feinted left and ran right, slipping past Iggy and making a break for the stairs. I heard Con curse as he accidentally stepped on the glass from the shattered pan. I probably could've made it then, but, like a total _jackass,_ Dylan stuck out his leg and tripped me.

"Ah!" I went sprawling, and Kyla and Wave hurriedly jumped out of the way. I flipped over and tried to scramble to my feet, but Con was quicker. In seconds he had me pinned, and, despite my protests and attempts to knee him in the place just south of the abdomen, he made sure Dylan was watching before he kissed me. In the background I heard Kyla gasp and Wave do a wolf-whistle.

As soon as I was able I smacked Con as hard as I could and yelled, "GET OFF!"

"Get over yourself," he spat, his eyes glinting in fury. His cheek was bright red from the slap. "You know it works."

I glared at him in response. Then I raised my head and craned my neck so I could get a look at Dylan, but he was still just sitting there, a bored look adorning his face. Which still had red eyes.

After all that, and nothin'. I dropped my head back to the floor in defeat. _Crap._

"Dammit," Con swore, getting to his feet.

"Can I ask what the frack just happened?" Wave asked. "I mean, I always thought you two-" She stopped mid-sentence as Con glared at her.

Dylan chuckled. "Poseidon doesn't like it when other people touch his things," he said with a smirk. "Usually he gets so bent up about it that he's able to force a switch. However." He looked down at where I was still laying on the floor and stopped smiling. "As much as I enjoyed that, it didn't do anything to help." He waved his hand in front of his eyes. "I'm still here. He's not. I don't feel anything."

"Nothing?" I hated how desperate I sounded.

"Not even the teeniest hint of a flicker of jealousy."

"But it's always worked before!" I cried as I sat up. Dylan just rolled his damn red eyes.

That'd been our only sure-fire thing. And since it hadn't worked, there was a high chance that nothing else would work, either. Unless, like, we went _extreme_ extreme and started trying to kill me in front of him or something. Wait, would that even work? Me getting hurt always made Sy freak out, but did it trump a kiss from Con?

(Ha-ha. I guess according to Sy the worst things that can happen to me are getting killed and getting kissed by Con. Say what you will, but the guy's definitely got his priorities straight.)

"Well, it's not now, so boo-hoo," Dylan replied irritably. He propped his head on his hand and stared angrily off into a corner. "Tch. Why do you even _want_ him back, anyway? He's a weak goody two-shoes who can't handle what he was made to do. I don't see why he's the favorite."

"Unlike you, Sy actually has a soul," I said acidly.

That seemed to tick him off. Dylan's jaw clenched for a second before he slammed his fist on the arm of the couch.

"I'm _not_ soul-less!" he said loudly.

I held up my hands in defense. "Whoa, boy."

"I just look out for myself and take opportunities where I see them. That's not wrong," Dylan said, his voice trembling a little with anger. "There are thousands of other people out there who are just like me."

"Thousands of other people haven't kidnapped and tried to have us killed," Iggy said slowly.

"I never tried to have you killed! I just followed orders is all!" Dylan retorted. Then he turned his eyes at me. "Besides. I _saved_ you once. That's kind-of the opposite of killing."

I opened my mouth to argue, but then I remembered. Sy had told me himself - after Con had stabbed me, he'd begged Dylan to save me. And he did.

_Well, fine, good for him,_ I thought sourly. One good deed against fifty billion bad ones. Ha! He was still _so_ on Santa's naughty list. For, like, the next twenty years. _At least._

"I'm not _evil,_ no matter what you think," Dylan said, crossing his arms. "I'm just a little worse than Poseidon. The only reason I exist like this is because he bottles up all his hate. I wouldn't be so screwed up if he actually showed an emotion every once in a while."

After an awkward pause, Con, who'd sat down to think deep thoughts in the rocking chair, looked up at Kyla and Wave. They'd timidly moved to stand at the end of the couch, eyes flickering between Dylan and each other.

"Hey, Kyla." She looked at Con and he asked, "What were you and Wave like before _your_ eyes turned red?"

She hesitated, glancing at Wave. ". . .I don't. . .really know," she finally admitted.

"I can't remember a lot of growing up," Wave added, shrugging helplessly. "Most of it's just a blur."

"You're _kidding_ me."

"They were mostly just the same."

Everyone, even Dylan, looked around in surprise. Aqua and Arthur were standing in the doorway to the front hall - they must've come down from their room to see what all the noise was about. Aqua had her hands behind her head and Arthur's arms were crossed across his chest, but both were looking straight at Dylan, expressions unreadable except for a tiny trace of disappointment.

"How long have you two been there?" I asked.

"Long enough," Arthur said shortly.

"So Sy's gone red, huh?" Aqua asked, though it wasn't much of a question. Dylan scoffed and looked away.

"We're not sure," Con said. "We're trying to figure it out."

"Well, when it happened to Kyla and Wave, it was sorta like what happened to Sy," Aqua began to explain.

"That is, the changes were random and totally extreme," Arthur added.

"But then it stopped for a while."

"And then all of a sudden they just went red and stayed that way."

"We don't know _why_ it happened, it just did."

"But when it did, their two sides sort-of merged."

"How do you mean?" I asked, glancing at Dylan. He'd perked up a bit at what Arthur had just said, as if interested.

"Well, they were never as nice as they'd been before, but they were never as mean as they'd been while red, either," Aqua said.

Arthur nodded in agreement. "Things just sorta balanced out."

I frowned. While that was great and all, that didn't exactly help us right now. Was this just another random switch? If so, why was Sy totally gone? They normally sensed each other, right?

"But you know. . ." Aqua paused, watching Dylan curiously. "Kyla and Wave didn't fight the red off so much as Sy did."

"So?" I said.

"So maybe that's why he's different than them," she suggested.

"Sy's kept the red side back, because he was afraid of the way it was triggered," Arthur said.

Aqua nodded. "See, we were all sorta told to keep emotions back, but they really forced it on Sy."

"He _was_ the favorite, after all."

"But because the red side was triggered by emotion, he totally just denied it and detached himself from it."

"So instead of being just an emotional state, it became its own personality."

"Sounds about right," Dylan said dully, rolling his eyes.

I ignored him, instead focusing on the twins. "How can you be sure?"

"It's just a theory," they said in unison. "We're basing it off Kyla, Wave, and Ariel. But they're all girls. This could just be because Sy's a guy."

"That's a weak argument," Con muttered from his rocking chair.

"But what about the others?" I inquired. "It's more than just them four that turned red, right?"

"The others were unbalanced," the twins said. "Their DNA was different than ours, so there's no real reason to bring them into the comparison."

"You know you guys totally freak me out when you do that?" Iggy said suddenly. Everyone looked at him, where he was still standing between this room and the next, leaning against the door frame. I wondered why he hadn't moved, then realized he was probably afraid to - there _was_ still a pile of broken glass by him, after all. I'd have to clean that up soon before someone cut themselves.

_Well, someone _else, I thought, glancing across the floor at Con. The heel of his sock was spotted with red from where he'd cut himself while chasing me.

"What?" the twins demanded, sounding confused.

"Speak at the same time for longer than a sentence," Iggy clarified. "It's like you get together once a week to plan conversations or something."

Aqua and Arthur both scoffed and crossed their arms. "Don't be ridiculous. We don't do that."

I found myself unable to hold back a smile. "What, so it's just coincidence?"

"Maybe!"

I snickered, forgetting for a second about what we'd been talking about. But then I was horrendously reminded as footsteps thudded up the stairs from the basement. Frankie looked around, saw us all in the living room, and started walking towards us.

"Hey, did Con and Sy ever come back from the store?" he asked. "Max said - ow!" He started back, hopping on one foot.

Oops. Glass.

"Uh, look out?" I offered.

"What the. . .why is there glass all on the floor?" Holding his foot in pain, Frankie looked around to us for an answer; he went still when he saw Dylan. "Wha. . .hey. . ."

Dylan sighed. "I _really_ wish people would stop looking at me like that."

* * *

at any point in time, feel free to message me (or just leave a review) with questions or random musings about the story. i miss talking to people about my writing. . .


	4. Chapter 4

(since i'm re-uploading, i decided i'd replace most of the author's notes in each chapter, but i like this one. so you get to read it again.)

sorry. i would've been writing, but there was this whole situation in my neighborhood. see, the minotaur mafia upped their taxes and then the elves sent out word that we were all going to rebel, because screw the minotaurs, they're not so tough, they don't have the right to oppress the rest of us. so i contacted all my dragon friends (all eight of them) and then i had andrew rally the griffins and we all got together in the cul-de-sac, right, and so we were waiting for the minotaurs to come along but then they must've heard about our rebellion because they sent out their hellhound jack t.h.e. ripper in retaliation, and isn't _that_ just the most intimidating name you've ever heard.

(by the way, the answer to that is yes.)

anywho, so now it's me and like ten elves, and we've got like eight dragons and a whole flide of griffins (that's about ten or twelve or so), but we've gotta go up against this freaking hellhound, which doesn't seem all that bad until he freaking calls up his cousin, this three-headed dog called cerberus ripper. well, ash - he's the elf prince who lives down the street from me - signaled to attack, but half of us couldn't do that morally since the two helldogs just seemed so. . .like. . .friendly. and cute. in their weird hellish way.

anyway, we ended up making friends with jack and his cousin (whose three heads are named greg, simon, and avel), and they quit the minotaurs' employ, right, which only pissed the minotaurs off, so there was a confrontation at the playground and we came to a peaceful agreement. 'cuz the minotaurs are actually not so mafia-ish once you get to know them on a personal level.

but yeah. peaceful agreement, and no more taxes. oh, and then we had a party. man, if you ever get to choose which kind of creature throws you a "no more mafia taxes" party, pick the dragons. lots of fire and drinking and dangerous stunts. it lasted two whole months.

so yeah. that's where i've been all this time.

partying with dragons.

and minotaurs.

and elves.

and griffins.

. . .true story.

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride.

* * *

_**4. this isn't the time for random references!**_

You know what's awesome? Surfing on the back of a giant wildebeest. It's quite dangerous and you could very well encounter some lions voiced by James Earl Jones and Jonathan Taylor Thomas, but I would say that it's quite worth it. I mean, who wouldn't want to meet James Earl Jones and Jonathan Taylor Thomas? And who knows, Jeremy Irons might even be there. And isn't he just a totally awesome badass? Of course he is, he's Jeremy Irons.

. . .I seem to have gone off on a tangent.

So you know what's _not_ awesome? Explaining to twenty kids why your best friend has suddenly vanished and left his jackass of an alter personality in his place. Yeah. It gets kind-of awkward. Especially when the youngest starts crying because she thinks nobody else is going to help her finish reading _The Sea of Monsters._

(Insert bad Poseidon-related joke here.)

After Janey had calmed down some and stopped crying, all that was left was an awkward silence. None of us had any idea how to fix this. Since the kissing Con thing hadn't worked, we had no other ideas. Absolutely nothing, short of, like, I don't know, trying to kill me. Wait, would that work? No. . .no, last time it'd happened, after Con had stabbed me that one time, Dylan had still maintained control. Sy had been _there,_ but he hadn't been able to switch.

Losing hope yet again, I leaned against my bedroom door. I'd ditched everyone else and retreated to my room - I needed time alone to think.

_What the hell are we supposed to do?_ I wondered miserably. _How can I get him back?_

"Hey, Sparky," a voice began from behind me.

I shut my eyes, my fist clenching. "Don't _call_ me that."

"Whoa," he said. "No need to get pissy."

I whirled around to scowl at Dylan, who was smirking slightly, leaning against the wall by my door.

"What do you want?" I snapped. It was one thing for him to have taken Sy's place in the controlling of their body, but he didn't have to look so damn comfortable with it.

"Nothing." He shrugged. "You seemed upset and I came to check on you. Is that so wrong?" he asked innocently.

It irked me that he sounded semi-sincere. But Fun Fact About Dylan #1: He's a manipulator. Therefore, he is never actually sincere. Remember that.

"Yes," I said defiantly. "Coming from you, it is."

He blinked, then sighed. "Look, I know you don't like me, and to be frank, I don't like any of you either," he told me. "But. . .I know that he does. And it's like Con said. There's nothing out here for me. So if there's anything I can do to help bring him back-"

"Tell me where he is." I don't care _how_ sorry he looked. As of right now, I still hated him. Most likely in an irrational way.

Dylan rolled his eyes impatiently. "I've said it a million times, I don't know."

"You're serious," I said flatly. I stared at him, but he gave nothing away. "There is another person living in your head and you really have no idea where he is?"

"None whatsoever," Dylan replied. Then he smirked again. "But don't worry. Even as we speak I'm posting missing person posters all over my psyche."

My jaw clenched. I think I was beginning to realize why Max and Con and all those leadery-types never seemed to like me. It's because I did crap like this, wasn't it? Joked around and didn't accept the seriousness of the matter at hand.

I have tasted my own medicine and it is _bitter._

"This isn't something to joke about," I said tightly.

"Oh, that's nice, coming from you," he sneered. "And who said I'm joking?"

"You know, I've only ever _really_ hated about two people," I said. I smirked, reveling in the fact that I was about to be pointlessly mean. "Leander was one, and you're the other."

* * *

Dylan frowned, and noticed how Spark's eyes lit up in satisfaction.

This was stupid. Here he was, actually trying to help her out, but she wouldn't have it. Just because of some bad blood in the past. She'd've done the same thing in his place!

. . .Or maybe she wouldn't've. Maybe that was it. She was just _good,_ when it came down to it, and he. . .well, wasn't. Not entirely.

_Fine,_ Dylan thought. If she already thought he was a jerk, he might as well act like it.

Mirroring her haughty smirk, Dylan looked down at Spark with narrowed eyes. He knew she'd hate it - the color, plus the expression, was just oh so different than what she was used to seeing on her stupid beloved Poseidon.

"But isn't Leander not with us?" he asked her, faking a pleasant tone. "That would mean I'm the number one person you can't stand."

He liked the way she went all still with fury.

"I think it's rather ironic," he went on conversationally. "The one person you truly hate coexists with the one person you truly love. Isn't that nice."

Were those pretty brown eyes of hers twinkling with _tears_ now? How unexpectedly wonderful. Sure it'd been a while, but Dylan hadn't lost his touch.

Leaning in closer to her, he dropped his voice to a low murmur. "You know, Spark, his eyes might have changed, but everything else is exactly the same."

Spark stared fixedly at a spot over his shoulder, determined not to look him in the eyes. To catch her focus, Dylan lifted his hand and waggled the fingers in front of her face. "Same hands."

She was watching him now, so he touched his cheek. "Same face."

Then he slid his hand to his neck. "Same voice."

And down to his chest. "Same body."

_Crack!_ Spark suddenly raised her hand and slapped him so hard across the face that his head banged off the wall. He chuckled with amusement, satisfied he'd gotten to her, and she stormed off into her room. Stepping toward the door, he called to her.

"I've never been one to stand in the way of true love, Spark. If there's anything you need, all you have to do is ask!"

"Fuck _off!_" she shrieked, and he started back as something slammed against the door. Maybe a shoe.

He chuckled to himself again. Then, aware that someone was watching him, he cast his eyes over to where Con was standing, watching him. "Can I help you?" he asked coolly.

Con just stared at him, as if he couldn't believe what he'd just seen. Then he shook his head. "I'd almost forgotten how much of an ass you are," he said. "There's really no line you won't cross, huh?"

_She started it,_ Dylan thought sullenly, but all he said aloud was, "I've yet to come across one that's given me pause."

Con rolled his eyes and went to Spark's door, pushing Dylan lightly but firmly out of his way. Not feeling up to eavesdropping on the impending attempt at consolation, Dylan turned to leave. Where he'd go, however, was a mystery. Maybe Poseidon's room? As good a place as any. At least he wouldn't be bothered there. Nobody would stare at him. But where was it?

He had made it to the end of the hall when Con finally called after him. "Just so you know?"

Dylan glanced back at him, raising an eyebrow questioningly.

"It's when you do things like this that makes us think you're evil."

And then he disappeared into Spark's room.

_Evil, huh?_ Dylan thought. Then he scoffed.

If only they knew.

* * *

I heard my door open and quietly shut; I tightened my grip on the shoe in my hand, ready to chuck it as hard as I could at Dylan's stupid red-eyed face. If he thought he could just say shit like that and then come into-

"_You're_ in a slappy mood today," Con said bluntly.

_Oh._ I lessened my hold on the shoe, but not all that much. "Well maybe it's because people keep pissing me off," I said, turning to face him. I held up the shoe threateningly. "Get out."

"No."

Con may be as annoying as hell these days, but you had to give him credit. He didn't even flinch as I threw the shoe so hard it left a dusty footprint on the wall beside his head. Rather, he just walked over and sat on the edge of my bed, and said, "He'll be okay."

"You don't know that," I retorted, staring moodily at the floor. I contemplated throwing more shoes, but I would've had to get up to find one. I only _have_ so many, you know. "He could be stuck like this. It happened to Ariel, it happened to Kyla, it happened to Wave. I couldn't. . .I can't. . .it's too hard to think like this." I propped my elbows on my knees and dropped my face into my hands.

It took a minute - probably because he had to fight the gag reflex of actually saying something nice for once - but Con finally said, "Sy will come back. He wouldn't leave you."

"Why should I care what you say about him? You _hate_ him. You can't stand him, you never could, just because he got me and you didn't."

I internally winced. My mouth had gotten ahead of my brain on that one. I'm usually pretty good about that kind of stuff. . .I mean, I know I say weird stuff, but I usually think it through. A little. Kinda.

"You really think I'm that petty." Con sounded. . .almost surprised.

Oh, what the hell. Already said it, might as well explain it. I lifted my head to give him a hard stare. "Ten years, Con. Because I ran away from you. Yeah, I _do_ think you're that petty."

He rolled his eyes and leaned back. "You know I'm different now," he said tiredly. (He _was_ different, by the way, as in he wasn't inherently evil anymore, but that's beside the point.) Then he paused and smirked. "In fact, I've changed so much that I'm almost as much of a girl as Sy is now."

I brought my knees up to my chest and hugged them, turning my back on him again. "Just go away."

But Con ignored me and went on. "That makes me, like, five times hotter in your eyes. And since I'm already naturally hotter than Sy is, that means I win. Right?"

I suddenly realized what was about to happen. I tried to get up, but Con's hand clamped on my shoulder and dragged me down so hard my back hit the bed. I automatically squirmed, but he half-leaned over me so he could pin down my other shoulder.

(You would think, wouldn't you, that we'd be over this whole capture issue by now. But no. Old habits die hard.)

"Con-!"

But he didn't do anything. He just stared at me until I stopped struggling and glared back.

"Look," he said evenly. "Since we both know I'm hot enough for you now, if I really wanted to kiss you, then I would. But I don't, so I won't. And not just because you're with my best friend."

"Don't lie, I know you hate him," I replied, but my heart wasn't in it. I just wanted him to go away so I could, like, sleep or something. I was tired. It all of a sudden felt like those times when you were a little kid, and you were just throwing a tantrum, but then someone - like your mom or your dad - just came up and hugged you until you stopped tantruming. And afterward you realized you'd been tantruming for no real reason. Sorta put you in your place, I guess.

It was totally weird. 'Cuz it was Con. And he doesn't put me in my place.

"Once upon a December, maybe," he said. "But not anymore. Not for a while."

I felt the confusion cloud my expression. _What the. . ._but then I realized. Oh, those little jerks. Being secret friends without telling me about it. How dare they.

"Just take some time to relax, Spark," Con said, standing up and letting me go. I slowly sat up, a little unnerved by how chill he sounded all of a sudden. "We'll get Sy back even if I have to go in there and drag him out myself."

What I disliked most was that Con had actually managed to calm me down. Sure, Dylan's being here was a problem, but hey, it'd only been a day. There was still lots of time to figure this out. So Dylan gets to be in control for a little while, big whoop. Sy will eventually come back. In the meantime, we'll try anything we can to help speed the process along.

Now I almost felt bad for throwing shoes.

". . .Sorry," I mumbled.

"Losing people does stuff to you. You're just not thinking straight," Con said lightly. "That can be your excuse for saying such horrible and slanderous things right to my ever-lovable face." I let out a weak chuckle and he smirked. "Just chill out for now. I've got better things to do than cheer you up."

I half-smiled and he left. As soon as the door shut, I flopped back on my bed and groaned.

Friggin' frig stick. What is wrong with the world? Since when is Sy the jackass and Con the nice guy?

* * *

From downstairs, Total could hear a faint sound of laughter.

He lifted his head and peered over at the clock sitting on the night stand. It was nearly four in the morning, which was weird; most everybody was asleep by now.

It'd been a bad day. After everyone had been told about Sy and Dylan switching, Spark had gone to hide out in her room, and the rest of the kids had eventually followed suit. It'd been quiet, with little of the usual chaos - no one had even thrown any food at dinner.

More laughing from the floor below. Listening carefully, Total realized the sound had to be coming from a television. There were just too many different voices, and they were all too quiet. The only question was who was watching TV at four in the morning?

Intrigued, Total carefully stood up and hopped down from the bed, trotting over to the door and nosing it open. Con didn't seem to notice. Or maybe he just didn't care, as he was too intent upon doing whatever he was doing on one of the laptops he, Blaze, Frankie, and the twins had liberated from the storage room of a Best Buy back in San Francisco.

The tags on Total's collar clinked softly as he walked down the hall, and louder as he went down the steep stairs. Usually he could get away with getting carried, and sometimes, if he was feeling adventurous, he'd fly. And now that he was thinking about it, Total decided that gliding was a good idea, so he leaped, falling down the stairway on silent, graceful wings, and banking sharply so he didn't splat against the downstairs bathroom door.

He backpedaled and dropped to the floor. After giving himself a good shake, Total folded his wings and trotted down the rest of the hall, turning to the living room and inspecting what he found there.

Dylan was sprawled out on a couch, limp and listless, staring mindlessly at the television, which was switched on and turned to a low volume. Total watched him for a few moments, trying to discern what it was, exactly, that made everyone in the house so uncomfortable. He _seemed_ harmless.

Finally, when whatever show Dylan had been watching went to commercial, Total asked, "What are you doing?"

Dylan's body jerked in surprise, and his head lifted slightly as he looked around. Finding Total, Dylan just stared at him for a second before replying, "I'm stalking Vermicious Knids*." Total chuckled, and Dylan rolled his eyes. "What's it _look_ like I'm doing?"

"I was more leaning toward the idea of what were you doing up so late," Total clarified. Dylan sighed and dropped his head back onto the couch, turning his eyes back to the TV.

"I can't sleep," he mumbled. "And he always used to watch stuff when that happened."

"He?" Total echoed. "You mean Sy?"

"Yeah. Whatever."

Total hadn't had much personal experience with Dylan, and he wondered just how bad the kid had to be. Because right now, he looked like Sy on any other sleepless night. Slightly dazed, glassy eyes, not really paying attention to what he was watching. He hadn't acted openly hostile since he'd been out, either. Unless you counted sarcasm as open hostility. Which Total didn't, because Sparky was sarcastic all the time. And she was one of the sweetest girls you could know.

Total stared at Dylan, again trying to see what it was that made him different from Sy. They looked exactly the same. They _smelled_ exactly the same. Were their personalities _that_ different? Total couldn't imagine so - after all, there was a very good chance Sy could have turned out like Dylan anyway had he never had a change of heart and decided to save Spark that night in Salt Lake.

Dylan's head lifted again so he could glare at Total. "Are you just going to stand there and stare at me all night?" he demanded.

_Well, there's that, then._ Total didn't think Sy would have the heart to purposely be that irritable. Slightly amused, the little dog trotted over to the couch; Dylan's hand twitched as Total's nose bumped it.

"Make room," he said. "I hate this tile, it's too darn cold at night."

Dylan looked confused, like he didn't understand. Total just waited silently until the boy shifted, leaving a little pocket of space on the couch for him to hop up on.

"Don't you have your own room?" Dylan asked warily as Total turned a few circles and lay down near his stomach.

"Technically, I share with Sparky," Total explained. "But she's rather upset right now, so I thought it best to leave her alone."

_Not that Con was any better,_ he added mentally. Not only had the kid tried to kick him out, but after that had failed he'd completely ignored Total as if he weren't even there. Noo, he was too busy with his stupid computer to bother with chit-chat. And not that many people seemed to _care,_ but Total was a rather chatty dog. He liked talking about various subjects for no particular reason.

Con? Not so much.

"Let me guess, it's my fault," Dylan said dryly.

"Yes."

It appeared as if Dylan hadn't expected such an upfront answer. He looked at Total in disbelief. "Gee, thanks."

"What?" Total asked. "No offense, but you're not Mr. Popular around here." He stretched out as much as he could and sighed in contentment. "Personally, I don't see what everyone's problem is. Sure, your personality's harsher, but to me, you look and smell just the same as Sy does."

"But my eyes are different," Dylan said slowly.

"Dogs are color-blind, you dolt." That actually made Dylan crack a smirk as he rolled his eyes. Total looked at the TV, where four men were dancing poorly while they made up a ridiculous rap about an avalanche. "Now, what is it we're watching?"

"_Whose Line._"**

"Ah."

They watched the show quietly for a while, and then Dylan, sounding all of a sudden much more like Sy, asked quietly, "Is that really all the difference to you? Personality?"

Total weighed the question a while. "Well, your voice isn't as high."

Dylan blinked. "What the. . .what's that supposed to mean?" he demanded, his tone back to normal. "We're the same person, how can we have different voices?"

"You're not _really_ the same person," Total replied, having just realized it himself. "It's the same body, but with different mannerisms. You speak slightly lower than Sy does. It's not very noticeable to the untrained ear, but I'm a dog, so."

Dylan scoffed, and then all of a sudden the TV went black. The little box in the corner of the screen asked if the program should be deleted - Dylan selected yes. Then he flipped through the list of recorded shows and scowled.

"Is something wrong?" Total ventured to ask.

"This DVR is stupid," Dylan replied irritably. "Twenty-five episodes of _Gossip Girl_ and not one _Big Bang Theory_***? It's ridiculous."

Total chuckled and poked his nose at Dylan's arm. "Do you want me to sing _Soft Kitty_ for you to help you sleep?" he asked pleasantly.

"That's for when you're sick. Idiot."

"Oh, come on. Haven't you heard what Sparky always says?" Total said. "Singing always makes things better. Let's try it."

"No," Dylan said shortly.

_"Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur,"_ Total sang softly.

"I will push you off this couch."

_"Happy kitty, sleepy kitty. . ."_ Total trailed off, waiting expectantly for Dylan to chime in.

It took a few moments, but finally, reluctantly, he said, "Purr, purr, purr."

"That's the spirit," Total said, and he stood up so he could lick Dylan's cheek.

* * *

*why yes, that _is_ a roald dahl reference you saw there. how very clever of you to spot it.

**i adore that show that with all my heart.

***and that one too.

almost forgot to update today. but then i remembered, so it's cool.

in other news, i've realized that whenever i'm watching a tv show that has british people in it, i automatically imitate their accents whenever i talk to myself for the rest of the day.

now farewell; i shall bring another chapter back tomorrow. that is, if i even survive the hurricane of feels brought upon me by the newest episodes of _legend of korra_ and _young justice._


	5. Chapter 5

i saw a dude with beard-dreads today.

they were dreadlocks. in his beard.

it was awesome.

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride.

* * *

_**5. tracking and stalking are two very different things**_

A few seconds after Total left, Con left his computer and went to shut the door. It'd been annoying enough just letting the dog stay on his bed, and he wasn't about to let it happen again. At least not now. He was too busy.

He was trying to find someone.

Sitting back down, he tried to find his place on the webpage he'd pulled up. He'd been up all night tracking and hacking into Itex's old files, but the only thing that had really been useful was this page, here, which was pretty much just a Wikipedia entry. Basic facts, short biography, and half of it probably not even true.

But it was all he had, so he took a shot.

_Westerfield, Marein Alexandra. M.D., Ph.D. Specializing in marine biology and genetic engineering. Head researcher and scientist concerning Hybrid Group 3, Human/Fish Recombinations._

Well, duh, he knew that. That was the _point._ If anyone could tell them what was up with the whole red eyes thing, it'd be Marein. She'd created the kids, after all. She knew everything there was to know about them.

_Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, June 8 1968._

Yeah, yeah, all the good things came from Canada. Whoop-de-freaking-do.

_Moved to Boston, Massachusetts, United States in 1985 at age of 17. Graduated Stanford, class of 1990. Recruited by Itex Corporation in 1990, stationed in Salt Lake City, Utah. Gave birth to first son, a.k.a. Project Poseidon, on December 10 1991._

That was new information. Who knew Sy was only a few months younger than him? In a random moment of distraction, Con clicked on the blue text of "Project Poseidon," and a new tab opened. And then he spent a couple minutes totally reading up on all of the stuff Itex had on Sy. Because. . .like. Well. Just _because._ When else would he have this opportunity to gain informational ammunition?

_Project Poseidon. Full legal name: Dylan Elliot Westerfield. Birth date: December 10 1991. Genetic makeup: 96.2% human, 3.8% fish._

Pfft. Elliot. What kind of name was that?

_Naturally agile. Tested to reach high speeds for short periods of time, shows more endurance at lower speeds._ _Top speed recorded, on foot: 71 mph. Top speed recorded, in water: 63 mph._

Speedy little bugger. But then again, that had always been obvious.

_Strength: average. Mental capabilities: elevated. Morals: developed. Criminal training: shows proficiency in lock-picking, safe-cracking, and entrance/exit routines._

Yeah, yeah, he knew all that. Where was the fun stuff, the weird quirks documented mostly out of interest than actual importance? Most experiments had them - random notes taken by a number of different observers, revealing anything from habits to fears to personal problems. Con remembered that his had even marked the incident with the horse back in '98.

He shuddered. Stupid nightmares.

Where was he? Oh, there. At the bottom.

_Problems with heights. . .shows little interest in interacting with others. . .unable to digest seafood (poss. led to bulim). . .shows reluctance, even fear, when left in care of male doctors. . . _

Con snorted. Of _course_ Sy had issues with other dudes. He'd been the only boy in a group of mostly girls, and he'd never had a dad around. But even so, what a wuss. The rest of them hadn't even had a mother around, and they'd all turned out fine. For the most part.

He glanced at the clock and did a double-take: it was four-thirty in the morning. Immediately he felt weird. He'd basically spent half an hour stalking what was virtually Sy's Facebook page.

Not. Normal. Fuck friendship, this was just _weird._

Hurriedly he closed the page and went back to Marein's file.

Scrolling past the basic info, Con focused on Marein's known places of living. Toronto, Boston, Palo Alto, Salt Lake. Salt Lake was a bust, she'd be too easily recognized. Palo Alto. . .probably not. Who wants to go back to school? Besides, it wasn't close, but close enough for her to have stopped by. She was most likely too far away to bother checking out the house she'd had built. That would mean Boston and Toronto were his best bets. He could hack Stanford's old files of her, get her previous address. And from there, he could track her back to Ontario.

It took about thirty minutes to bust through the Stanford mainframe, and from there it was basically a Google search. Type in a name, get a result. He found the address in Boston - her emergency contact, that of an old uncle (oh hey, that's where Elliot had come from) - and through him Con found the tie to the family in Ontario. He found the address, and a number.

There's no place like home, right?

Sometimes, even the smartest of people - such as those who could build the perfect house for hiding a bunch of mutant hybrid teenagers - could be really, _really_ dumb. It's the college effect. You leave home to live your life and do whatever the hell you want, but at some point you want to go back. Because it's comfortable there.

Con had picked up a phone and dialed the house's phone number without even really thinking it through. Only after it had rung twice did his brain catch up with his actions.

_. . .Wait, shit. What am I doing?_ Con held the phone away from his ear and stared blankly at the computer screen. So, what? Did he just say hi before politely explaining their situation and end by hoping she could help? Or did he just jump right in with a bribe, or a threat? Or should he just treat it like a simple business matter, and-

_"Hello?"_

Screw it. "Dr. Marein Westerfield?"

_"Yes?"_

Con smirked. "Please tell me I'm right in assuming that you have absolutely no life or purpose considering that Itex has completely reformed and abandoned you like the piece of trash you actually kind-of are."

(Totally nailed it.)

(Like a boss.)

There was a stunned silence from the other end, but after a moment, Dr. Westerfield asked in a falsely pleasant tone, _"I'm sorry, who is this?"_

"It's Constantine," he replied. "And I need you to be in Santa Barbara as soon as possible."

Again, silence. Con waited, idly fingering a quarter he'd just found on his desk. He hadn't dealt a _lot_ with Marein, but he guessed he could play her well enough to get her out here. Even without the mind-torture ability, Con was pretty good at talking to people. When he felt like it.

_"Well, let's see,"_ Marein finally said._ "I'm totally across the country, have no means of getting there, and even if I did I would _not_ cater to the every whim of someone who called me a piece of trash."_

Her voice had started out all motherly and kind, but towards the end it spiraled off into venomous contempt. But, Con noted, despite all of that scathing sarcasm she was still on the line. So mention of Itex _did_ get him a foot in the door. Just as he'd thought.

"It's about your son," he said dully. "And the other members of your super special little protégé group."

Marein laughed humorlessly. _"Those little bastards have _already_ stolen everything they can from me,"_ she snapped. _"They can just drop dead for all I care."_

What an inspirational human being. Frowning, Con replied, "Look, I know it's _inconvenient,_ Your Highness, but aren't you even a _little_ bit curious as to how they've been? I mean, I know you surgically removed all maternal instinct the second you decided to turn Sy into an experiment, but let's be reasonable. You're a scientist. These kids are your life's work. Don't you want to see how they've turned out?"

_"Why are you calling?"_ she asked after a pause.

And casual insults win again. Say what you want about shameless flattery, but people are far more likely to listen and remember the terrible things you say about them rather than the good things. It's a sad truth, but a truth nonetheless.

"Because we have a problem," Con said, "and as far as we're aware you're the only one who managed to weasel your way out of Itex's normal firing procedure."

There. Give her a sense of importance. Make her feel like they _needed_ her.

(Of course, they actually _did_ need her, but she didn't need to know that now.)

_"Oh?"_ Marein's original haughty, sneering tone came back. _"And what _problem_ are you experiencing, Constantine?"_

"It's your son, not me," Con snapped. "He's having issues with the whole personality shift that's apparently a genetic defect of his group. You know, the red eye thing. You interested in coming out here to take a look?"

_"And where might _there_ be?"_ she drawled.

"Oh, you know." Con smirked again. "Just a cozy little shack out in Santa Barbara somewhere. We really lucked out, you know, it was free, it had plenty of space, even had a pool. Two, actually. It's quite nice, I, I rather like it."

Marein gasped in disbelief. _"You little runts are _in_ my _house?_"_

"_Your_ house?" Con asked, faking surprise. "Ohhh, that's right. Yeah, they _did_ mention you were the one who'd had it built. Weird, that you didn't come to take it from us. Guess it's just your undeniably good character shining out again. Letting us all live in peace like this, it's really kind of you."

_"I should hang up on you!"_ Marein burst out.

_Yes, you should,_ Con agreed mentally. But he knew that she wouldn't - if she had intended upon hanging up at all, she would have done it at the start of the conversation. The one fatal flaw of all the scientists was their curiosity: if you can catch it right away, then you're pretty much set. To be honest, Con had thought he'd have to go into detail about Sy's condition to get her to come out, but apparently just the lure of all the kids who had managed to survive was enough.

"But it all works out, doesn't it," he said to Marein, "because now you know exactly where we are. And, since I know where _you_ are, I can arrange for a flight to San Francisco. . ." He paused to Google flights from Ontario to San Francisco. ". . .tomorrow morning via Air Canada. Plane leaves at eight, you'll arrive at one, and I'll have a cab pick you up. The calling card will read 'Miss I-Don't-Have-Another-Option'. What d'you think?"

He winced as she rather violently hung up the phone. But, satisfied with his work, he set down the phone and didn't call again. He booked the flight and then contacted the car service - reluctantly, he resisted the sarcastic calling card and instead told them to wait for Dr. Westerfield.

It was only then, after everything had been said and done, that Con shut his computer and went to bed. It was five-thirty in the morning - he'd been up all night, which probably meant he'd be sleeping all day. But it was worth it if it meant getting things back to normal.

Well, as normal as they could be.

* * *

i know Con _assumed_ that Sy's middle name was "Elliot" due to the fact that it was Marein's uncle's name, but that's not really why. he was actually middle-named after Elliot Stabler in hopes that the toughness and badassery of the name would transfer over.

true story.


	6. Chapter 6

random fact about me #5986247: i write fanfiction for my own stories. like, take my original book ideas and do crossovers with various fandoms.

random fact about me #5986248: i do this way more than i do any actual writing.

such is the extent of my randomness.

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride.

* * *

_**6. red vs. blue**_

I woke up the next morning at the crack of noon. So I guess it wasn't _technically_ morning, but what else do you say when you wake up?

For a while I just lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Every now and then I'd pick out a picture in its bumpy surface, but after I saw a fish I stopped looking.

Why the frig was Dylan here all of a sudden? I'd been up way late thinking it over, but I still couldn't figure it out. From the sounds of it it had just happened randomly, with no triggers to set him off. Had he seen something, maybe, that Con hadn't noticed? But what would do that? Something that reminded him of Itex? Or. . .some_one?_

After we'd messed up Itex, someone else had bought it out and cleaned house. Or at least that's what Leander had told me. And sure, the guy may have been a totally creepy psychopathic stalker, but he hadn't lied to me all that much. So going off of what he said about Itex - or, as it was now apparently called, 4Kids - there was practically nobody left from the old regime. Well, nobody except us runaways. And we were all accounted for.

Unless. . .were we? Sure, the majority of us were here, in Santa Barbara, but what about the others? Ariel and those two other fish-kids, and those four cat-guys from Egypt. They'd been at the London conference too, but since they'd been, like, _evil,_ we'd left them out of our escape plan. What had ever happened to them?

I frowned a little guiltily, because part of me suspected they'd been rounded up and terminated. Leander had said only him and a couple others had stuck around, and I doubt the mutants had made the cut after what we did. But then again. . .huh. Maybe Ariel had survived? As the first-ever successful fish hybrid (apparently she was older than Sy by a few weeks), she had a rarity that might have saved her. And I could see why just seeing her would trigger a change - she was red in a bad way, she liked Sy better when he was red, and no doubt she was enough like Dylan to bring him out. Like attracts like, right?

Hmmm. It was something to look into, at least, and that made me feel a little better.

Flipping back the covers on my bed, I swung my legs to the floor and-

_Snap! Snap-snap!_

"OW!" Pain whipped across my toes and my heels; I snatched my feet back up and looked around my room. Upon moving in, all the rooms had been practically bare save for twin-sized beds and the occasional endtable. And now, even a month later, most of them were still like that. Today, however, was a different story.

Mousetraps. They were everywhere, set out upon my floor like a second carpet, like miniature rodent-related land mines, so many that it would take true ninja skills to avoid them. Some of them were painted in Easter-y colors and instantly I knew that this was the twins' handiwork.

True, it was after noon, so I _was_ free game, but come on. Same prank two days in a row? How dare they.

Rubbing my sore feet, I carefully leaned over to peer at the floor at the side of my bed. I'd set off three of the traps, leaving only, oh, I don't know, a gajillion more to be sprung.

"Hmm," I hummed, leaning back. "How to get out of here. . ."

I could always clear a path, using other objects to set off the traps. I glanced around, but the only thing I had at hand was the lamp on the table, and it wasn't nearly long enough to be trusted. If only I had my hockey stick. . .but no, that was outside, abandoned with the others after the aquatic fencing tournament we'd had last week.

I could also just tiptoe to the door. So long as I didn't overbalance, I'd be okay.

_Or_ I could climb over the endtable, step onto the empty bed (most of the rooms had two twins), and jump out the window. It'd still leave the problem of getting back in, but at least then I could have my hockey stick. And if they'd set out more traps in the hall, I'd avoid them entirely.

"Window it is." I stood up and walked onto the table, then hopped over to the opposite bed. Then - because we _did_ have neighbors who _did_ sometimes look out their own windows - I spent a few minutes carefully searching the horizon for witnesses. This was where raptor vision (and, to some extent, my own super-strong hawk eyes) came in handy. I could casually glance over the landscape while still totally spying on anybody I wanted to spy on. It was pretty neat.

But with great power comes great responsibility, so I exercised my creeper abilities with care.

Once sure the coast was clear, I dove out the window. Opening my wings a little, I coasted for a second until I was underneath the blockage of the backyard hedges. Then I jacked my left wing all the way open so I could bank a one-eighty and fly back across the yard, landing with a running stop just outside the back door.

Ha. Take that, devious mousetrap-setting twins.

I pulled open the sliding glass door and stepped into the kitchen.

_Snap!_

"OW!" I yelled. I grabbed my foot and hopped over the threshold, avoiding the other four mousetraps in the process. Bastards! They'd planned for my evasive maneuvers!

Smart. But evil, too. Oh, so very evil.

"Oww. . .ow ow ow," I moaned. Limping over to the kitchen table, I dragged out a chair and sat down. I tugged off my sock to inspect my injured foot, wincing as I saw the bright red welts arcing across my skin. Geez. I hadn't been hit with a mousetrap since last Easter, and it still hurt like a mo-fo. Nice to know they don't lose their touch as time goes on.

"You probably should have known better than to try to outsmart them," said Dylan, and I jumped.

I hadn't realized he was even in the room, but there he was over by the stove. Any hopes I'd had of Sy magically coming back in the middle of the night were dashed as I scrutinized Dylan's figure. He was wearing Sy's only pair of black jeans, along with one of his few long-sleeved shirts. Usually Sy kept to the lighter colors and short sleeves, but it seemed Dylan was vastly different. He was even wearing a _hat,_ a beanie he'd probably stolen from someone else's room. Because Sy didn't wear hats. Not unless someone made him.

I frowned, hating that Dylan was going out of his way to be opposite. Just _had_ to rub it in my face, didn't he, that he was here and Sy wasn't. What a jerk.

. . .Okay, he probably wasn't doing it on purpose, but still. It irked me.

Assuming I was staring out of confusion, Dylan elaborated. "Alice and Arthur," he said. "They're a lot smarter than you are first thing in the morning."

_Alice?_ This time I _was_ confused, and I was about to ask about it when I realized: he was in the kitchen.

By the stove.

Which was turned on.

And he was holding a frying pan.

Which had some type of food in it.

I froze.

I think I've mentioned it before, but I'll say it again now: _Sy and Con are not allowed in the kitchen._ They'd been banned. If they could use a simple microwavable snack and turn it into a flaming, cheesy time bomb that could obliterate three large appliances, then God only knew what they could do with more advanced foodstuffs.

So I will freely admit that the idea of Dylan in the kitchen was a little terrifying.

He didn't seem to notice my sudden fear. "Just a thought," he mumbled, and he turned back to the stove. I watched him blankly, but he didn't say anything else. Instead, he went on with cooking what smelled like grilled cheese. My suspicion was confirmed when he actually lifted the pan and _flipped the grilled cheese without aid of a spatula._ I was partly impressed, partly annoyed, still a little scared, and also thinking: _does not compute._

"What are you doing?" I finally asked.

He turned to me again, disbelief in his ruby-red eyes. "Uh, making food?"

"You're not allowed to," I said automatically.

Dylan just looked at me in bewilderment. ". . .So, what, was I supposed to wait until someone else came along and fed me?" he asked. "I'm not a kid, I can do things for myself." As if to prove his point he flipped the sandwich again.

"But you're not allowed to be in here," I repeated. I knew I sounded stupid, like a little kid not understanding a simple logical fact, but. . .but. . .that's just how it _was._ Sy does not go into the kitchen. Ever. At all. For any reason.

Dylan sighed and turned off the stove. He picked up a plate and - even further proving his point - flipped his grilled cheese from pan to plate as if it were nothing. Then he crossed the kitchen and sat down across from me at the table.

Even the way he _sat_ was different. He was all slouchy and stuff. Sy always sat straighter than that, unless he was really tired.

"What you mean is _Poseidon_ isn't allowed to be in here," Dylan told me carefully. He pointed at his eyes. "We're two different people. I thought you knew that."

I scowled. "I _do_ know that."

"Then act like it," he replied tightly.

"Oh, you mean I haven't been?" I asked, faking surprise. "I guess my subtle insults didn't come across last night. And by the way, your face is stupid."

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, fine, whatever. You don't like me because I 'took' Poseidon from you. But-"

"Stop calling him _Poseidon,_" I blurted, and Dylan blinked. I shrugged a shoulder uncomfortably. "What? Nobody calls him Poseidon. That's weird. It's just Sy."

"Fine," Dylan said scathingly. "You don't like me because I took _Sy_ from you. Well, I don't care about that, but you can't hate me because I'm not him and then just turn around and try to treat me like I _am_ him with this stupid kitchen thing. I don't care whether or not he's _allowed_ in here, okay. I am _not_ him, so the same rules do not apply."

God, I hate logic. Especially when it undermines your anger.

I stood up, avoided the remaining mousetraps on the floor behind me, and shoved my chair back at the table. "All right then," I said, and then I pointed at him in a threatening manner. "But you have to do the same."

"What are you _talking_ about?" he demanded.

"Don't expect to be treated like him." Every word dripped with contempt, and an unfamiliar emotion flickered through Dylan's eyes. Fear, maybe, or just surprise.

I'm gonna go with fear. It makes me feel better.

After a second's pause, Dylan scoffed and shook his head. "I only did that to piss you off. I can't believe you didn't realize that."

"As a matter of fact I did," I told him, "but I'm not going to let you get away with it again."

Dylan smirked. "I didn't think you let me get away with it the first time."

"Oh. Oh, you think that was me being mad?" I smiled and laughed falsely. "No, that was just the sample test. The real thing would make you cry."

"I'll make note of it," he acknowledged, now sounding bored. I glared at him one final time and went off to storm dramatically out of the room, but then I remembered what I'd thought of before getting up this morning. So, reluctantly, I turned back around.

"Hey." With a calming breath, Dylan twisted in his chair to look at me. "Do you. . .remember anything from yesterday?"

"Yeah," Dylan said slowly. "I'm _not_ a goldfish, so my memory _does_ last longer than three seconds."

My jaw clenched. "I meant when you came out," I said tightly. It took a lot of willpower to not add "of the closet" to that, but I resisted. _Wow_ is it hard going up against a sarcasm-freak like me.

"No," he answered. "Just that I was all of a sudden in control. Why?"

Well frack. That didn't help. At all. But what could I expect? If even Dylan didn't know what had happened - and, to be honest, he was probably the best person besides Sy to ask about it - then what hope did we have of coming up with a solution? It was like a cycle: we can only get Sy back if we figure out what happened, but we can only figure out what happened if we get Sy back.

_And things were going so good until now,_ I thought wistfully. I heaved a sigh. "Just. . .nothing, nevermind."

"Whatever." Dylan rolled his eyes. "Anything else?"

I hesitated, but then asked, "Who's Alice?"

Dylan stared at me. "Are you serious?"

"What?"

"She's Arthur's sister."

". . .Oh." In retrospect, it was actually kind-of obvious that "Aqua" was a nickname. I mean, no sane person names their twins with one weird name and one normal name. But yet I couldn't blame her for taking a different title - who wants to be named _Alice,_ anyway?*

"Is that all?" Dylan inquired. "My sandwich is getting cold."

Well, since he'd asked. I nodded my head. "What's with the hat?"

Dylan's eye twitched and he pointed to his forehead, where a tuft of silvery bangs were sticking out from beneath his hat. "Would _you_ want to live with this hair?"

"Yes," I replied immediately. "I think it's _dope._ And fly. And a bunch of other ridiculous words masquerading as compliments."

"Why are you still here?" Dylan demanded, his fist clenching.

"You asked if there was anything else," I replied innocently. "And there was."

"Yeah, well what about now?"

I took my time in pretending to think. ". . .No, nothing comes to mind," I said at last.

"Then can you leave me to eat my lunch in peace?"

My automatic response was to say no, run over there and steal his food out of pure spite. But, as much as I dislike Dylan, I didn't quite feel up to carrying out my dastardly plan. Besides, that sandwich was all contaminated with Dylan-germs. And cooties.

So I turned and left, barely noticing the emptiness of the house as I climbed back up the stairs. Dylan may not have been a help, but there was still Con. Maybe he'd forgotten to mention something. Or maybe he had his own theories. Man, I was probably going to have to go around to everybody, wasn't I, in hopes that one of them had an idea. We could put together a think tank.

I suddenly blinked, realizing I was halfway up the staircase to the third floor. We'd set it up so that girls had the top floor, guys had the middle floor, and the ground floor and basement were communal. And when I say "we," I mostly mean "Max." Nothing against her for it, either - it was probably safest. What with all the hormonal teenagers we had here and everything.

I trailed down the boys' hall until I about reached where my room was up above. Only down here, the rooms were spaced differently, so I had two choices. I knew one of these was Sy's, and the other was Con's, but sometimes I couldn't remember which was which. I took a chance and knocked on the one on my left, and from within I heard a familiar, cranky groan.

Success.

I knocked again. "Con?" After no response, I rattled the doorknob. "Con, I'm coming in." I pushed open the door and quickly stepped back - he _was_ free game, after all. Someone might have set a trap.

But as it happened, nothing did. Relieved by the absence of pranks, I took a step inside and then all of a sudden something exploded near my head.

I jumped and hit the door in surprise. Looking wildly around, I saw bits and pieces of a lightbulb lying scattered on the floor. Con had. . .thrown a _lightbulb_ at me? What, what, I don't even. . .I mean, a _lightbulb?_ Of all things?

"A _lightbulb?_" I said aloud. "Dude, that could've-"

He interrupted with two stony words: "Get. Out."

I glanced around for the clock and saw it was a quarter to one. Looking quizzically at the lumpy pile of blankets on the bed, I said, "What's up _your_ ass? Not even you sleep this late."

"Just go away," came the muffled mumble.

"No." I strode across the room - still on the lookout for possible traps - and sat on the edge of his bed. "Look, when you were in Wal-Mart yesterday-"

I was cut off yet again as Con stirred. At first I thought he was just turning over so he could glare at me or something, but then there was a great flurry of movement and I found myself staring down the length of a pocketknife blade. I held up my hands in surrender and scooted back.

"Get. The fuck. Out. Of my room," Con said, slowly and dangerously. I glanced at his face and saw he looked haggard and shadowy, his eyes glassy with fatigue and his mouth contorted into a scowl.

I put my hand on his wrist and pushed down until he lowered the knife. With a lot of crabby, curse-ridden grumbling, he flicked the blade closed and shoved it back under his pillow, which he then lay back down on before yanking the covers back up over his head.

(And this was him on a mildly bad day. Not even a hellish day, which was like that one time when he threw a lamp.)

"Okay, seriously, what the hell is up?" I asked.

"I was awake all night," Con replied irritably. "Go away."

"Awake?" It took a second, but then I guessed. And gasped. "Did I miss the walk of shame? Was it Slutty McShortSkirt again?"

He let out a short chuckle. "No, it wasn't that. Though I should probably call her, so thanks."

I'll explain. Slutty McShortSkirt was a girl who lived a few houses away across the street. A month ago she'd noticed that our house was suddenly occupied (partly with teenage boys) and had visited under the guise of housewarming cookies. Lucky for us - and her a little bit, I guess, depending on how you looked at it - Con had been the only one there when she'd knocked on the door. And according to him, he'd played it so that she is none the wiser about our true identities as mutant outlaws.

However. In Con's words, you can still do a lot while wearing a shirt to hide your wings. And also in Con's words, sometimes girls are just really, really stupid.

I don't actually _know_ the girl's real name, but you can probably guess why we call her Slutty McShortSkirt. Mix one part desperation, one part male hormones, and one part convenience and you end up with a denim skirt on the floor of Con's room. Which, yes, I _did_ find when the twins and I snuck in the next day to steal his hockey stick for aquatic fencing.

(To this day I wonder why she chose to walk home without a skirt. Maybe she'd been wearing a long shirt or something.)

And since then, she - and some other girls too, sometimes - has made random (and sometimes awkward) appearances late at night or early in the morning, depending on whether or not Max was asleep. I never pegged Con as one to care what Max thought of him, but I could see his side of it - she was like the naggy mom, who you never said anything to because she would just talk endlessly about it. Plus the whole secrecy thing, which Max probably didn't trust any of us to keep, which was probably why the only neighbor any of us had even sort-of met was ol' Slutty. And even with her we weren't really friends. The only reason she ever came around was to. . .well, you know.

In a slightly less crabby manner, Con flipped back part of his blanket so he could look at me with one bleary gray eye. "So what'd you want?"

"Hm? Oh. Did you, um, see anything at Wal-Mart yesterday?"

"Why?"

I hesitated. "Just. . .I was trying to figure out why Dylan came out-"

"Of the closet?" he interrupted. I smirked. See, this is what made Con tolerable. Insulting people I don't like almost makes it worthwhile.

"No, but we can come back that," I said wryly. "Actually, it was just, uh. . .I was trying to think of triggers. Anything that could have made him switch with Sy."

He blinked, but after a moment's pause he said, "Nothing comes to _mind,_ but if I remember anything I'll tell you."

"Yeah." That's what I thought would happen. Ah well, it was worth a try. "Thanks anyway."

Con nodded, then hid back beneath the blanket. "Go away now."

I was about to comply and had stood up to leave when - just as with Dylan downstairs - I was drawn to stay by a recurring thought.

"Hey, if there was no girl, why were you up all night?" I asked curiously. Usually we only stayed up late as a group thing, like if we were watching a marathon on TV or if there was intense video-gaming to be done.

" 'Cuz," Con said tersely.

I grinned. "Was it a dude?"

"Get out."

I snickered. "I'll accept you for who you are, Con," I said honestly. "You don't have to be afraid to-"

There was another flurry of movement and I ditched before I could get hit. I'd barely gotten the door closed when something shattered against it, coupling well with the shout of, "GET OUT!"

I laughed, then quickly went to the stairs in case Con decided to get up and extract his revenge. Maybe I'd find the twins, wherever they were, and we could plan a prank for when he finally _did_ decide to wake up. Or. . .I frowned, my sudden good mood fading. Or maybe I should just stick to the problem at hand, and try to gather everyone up for a think tank.

Or I could wait. We could think tank _after_ having some fun. Because, after all, all work and no play makes Spark a dull-

_Snap!_

"OW!" I staggered backwards and fell over, clutching my foot. I'd made it to my room, all right, and as suspected, more mousetraps had been set out in the hall, lying in wait for my tender, sleepy feet. "God. . ._dammit!_"

Stupid mousetraps.

* * *

*no offense to those of you named alice.

there were lots of dashes in this chapter. i don't know why.


	7. Chapter 7

my new favorite animal is the peacock.

this message brought to you by the fact that i have absolutely nothing else to say.

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride.

* * *

_**7. think tanks suck monkey feet**_

Really. They do.

No offense to whoever came up with the idea. In all honesty it's rather good in theory. But in reality, not so much.

You know how _hard_ it is to get all your friends together to just _think_ about one specific topic? Especially when practically every single one of them keeps looking to you to crack wise about everything everybody says?

"Okay. Seriously now. Any other possibilities?" Max asked, looking around to all of us. She'd been keeping track of the theories on a yellow legal pad, and so far she'd ended up ripping out half the pages. Crumpled balls of paper littered the table and floor, some covered in writing, most with scribbles. Even the current page of theories had only a few ideas and a crap-ton of crossings-out.

"What if, like, it's a time-share thing?" Wave suggested, and Max wrote it down. "Like, Sy's built up too much work time, and now Dylan's just here to balance it out?"

As with every single other idea that had been said, lots of eyes flickered to me first, waiting for a sarcastic quip. But after two hours of extreme think-tanking, I just didn't have it in me anymore. My brain was fried.

Somewhere around two o' clock Max had caught Iggy, D.J. and I putting the finishing touches on an elaborate string-related bomb trap in Con's room (I hadn't been able to find the twins). It was going to be great, too - dozens, maybe even hundreds of strings criss-crossed over Con's room, acting as trip-wires to a couple new bombs Iggy had been working on. D.J., who was kinda good with electronics, had helped by stringing up some live wires, too, to give Con a little jolt if he tried to cut his way through.

As much as Max appreciated the prank, she was more concerned with the Dylan problem. She chided me a little for wasting time with jokes when I could instead be thinking of ways to get Sy back. I pitched my think tank idea to get her off my back and she bought it.

So now here we were two hours later, stuck at the poker table down in the game room with most of the other older kids, trying to figure out why Dylan was Dylan instead of Sy.

Upon realizing that I wasn't going to brighten the mood with a joke, everyone looked to Dylan for a response to Wave's suggestion. He just let out a breath and shrugged. "Maybe. Unlikely, but possible, I guess."

There were a few unhappy grumblings, and Frankie even let his head drop to the table in defeat.

"Can't you give us any more than that?" Aqua demanded in frustration. "That's all you've been saying all day!"

"Whatever, maybe, I guess," Arthur added, imitating Dylan's voice. Dylan sent him a sour look.

"No, stop, please, desist," I said tonelessly. It didn't matter - even if they heard me they wouldn't pay attention.

"I'm _sorry,_ but that's all I _have_ to say," Dylan snarled. "Like the rest of you, I have no freaking idea why this happened or why Sy isn't here to respond. You might as well stop getting pissed at me for not knowing any more than you do!"

"I think the idea is that you _should_ know," Blaze commented, and Dylan rounded on her next.

"Oh really? Why _should_ I?" he demanded. "Because I was in with Itex? Because I had access to our files? Sorry, I guess I should have _prepared_ for this!"

"Stop yelling, she didn't mean that," Iggy snapped.

"Then what _did_ she mean? Please, enlighten me!"

"She _meant_ that since you're the only one who hasn't taken over, you'd know why you have now," Joey guessed.

"Not exactly, but-" Blaze began, but Dylan cut her off.

"Again, I only know as much as anybody else!" he exclaimed. "Sy fucking _hated_ me, he did whatever he could to shut me out!"

Kyla tried to touch his arm and he jerked away. "Just calm down," she said, sounding concerned.

"Why should I?"

"Because yelling isn't getting us anywhere," Fang said calmly.

"I disagree," I chimed in. "It's getting us all pissed the fuck off at each other."

Max suddenly put her pen down and stood up. "Let's take a break, okay?" she said, looking around at each of us. The way she said it told me that it wasn't a suggestion - it was an order. "So we can all cool out. Come back in five."

And with that she turned and left the room, Fang following close behind. They were probably going off to have their own mini-think-tank session, and I couldn't blame them. For so long, Max had been a leader, confiding and brainstorming with no one else but Fang. And now she was stuck here in a house with twenty more kids, nearly half of them old enough to challenge her whenever she got too leadery.

I sighed, remaining in my chair while Wave, too, got up and left with the twins, the three of them murmuring amongst themselves. Closing my eyes, I leaned my head on my hand and massaged my temple, suddenly feeling drained. Hard-core thinking was a lot of work. Especially when around a lot of people. And even more especially when arguments sprung up every five goddamn minutes.

"This so-called think tank is getting us nowhere," Joey said quietly. I opened my eyes and saw that he, Dylan, Kyla, and Blaze were the only ones left at the table with me. Everyone else had scattered, either to the bathrooms down the hall or just away to have mini-sessions of think-tanking.

"Yeah." I sighed and stretched. "Looks that way, huh?"

"Where's Con been in all this?" Kyla asked, glancing around. "Shouldn't he be helping out? I mean, he was _there_ when it happened. Maybe he saw something."

"I already asked, but he didn't remember anything weird," I told her. "Besides, he's. . .busy right now."

Instantly that caught Kyla's attention, and she smiled sneakily.

"Like, _busy_ busy or. . ." She trailed off and raised an eyebrow suggestively.

I smirked. "Nah, he's just sleeping. But apparently it's because he was up all night."

"Oooh," she trilled. "Scandalous."

Dylan scoffed. "I was up all night too. Nobody's letting _me_ sleep."

"You don't hurt people when you're tired," I pointed out.

"I could start," he retorted.

"Cool out," Joey cut in, breaking up the argument before it could get going. "That's what this break's for, isn't it?"

Dylan scowled, then shoved back from the table. "Whatever." He stood and trudged off, viciously kicking one of the crumpled paper balls as he went.

"Such a sweet and caring boy," Kyla said with a false sigh of wistfulness.

I smirked, but it faded soon enough. In Dylan's defense, he _was_ being put under a lot of stress. Everyone kept pestering him for answers that he didn't have. And it's not like anybody ever went to the rescue and told the others to back off - Dylan was an outsider, a non-friend. We didn't exactly rush to the aid of non-friends.

"Are you okay?"

"Hm?" I didn't realize I'd closed my eyes until Joey touched my elbow. I looked over at him and saw concern in his dark eyes. "Yeah, why?"

He looked at me quizzically, then, eventually, he sputtered out, "But. . .I. . .Come on."

"What?" I asked.

"It's _Dylan,_" Joey said, as if that explained everything. "He's, like, the anti-Sy. This has to suck for you."

Oh. I shrugged helplessly. "It does, but there's nothing I can do about it right now. We tried the fail-safe, it didn't work, and now we need a new idea. It's simple as that."

"You had a fail-safe?" Blaze asked. "What was it?"

"Uhh. . ." _Uh-oh._

Now, as far as anybody knew, my. . ._time_ with Con on the ship, when we'd first tried kissing in order to get Sy back, virtually never happened. Sy had been the only one to see, and none of us had ever talked about it to the others. And yesterday, when we'd tried it again, only Kyla, Wave, and Iggy had been there to see. And Iggy hadn't even seen anything. So to the rest of the group. . .well. _I_ didn't want to tell them anything about it. I'd never hear the end of it.

But Kyla had no such qualms.

"Con and Spar-ky, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G," she sang.

Blaze and Joey both jumped and looked at her. "What?"

I grabbed up the nearest crumpled note sheet and chucked it at Kyla. "Shut up!"

She laughed and easily dodged it. "Oh, calm down, I know the story," she said. "Con told us afterwards. It's no big deal, you did what you had to."

"Wait, that's not a joke?" Joey asked.

"So you actually made out with Con?" Blaze said incredulously, staring at me in bewilderment. Like she couldn't even begin to comprehend the magnitude of the thought. "When was this?"

"I did not _make out_ with him," I snapped. "It was just a kiss, one time, because we thought it'd make Sy jealous enough to switch out with Dylan. And it worked. Before. Not this time."

Blaze shook her head, _tsk_ing. "My life feels like a lie. I thought out of everybody, you'd be able to resist."

"Resist _what?_ His raw animal magnetism?" I asked sarcastically.

"Whose raw animal magnetism?" We all gave a start as Frankie walked back into the room, taking his seat next to Joey again.

"Nobody's," I said quickly, before anybody could tell him. I may not have been able to control Kyla, but I would _not_ have the whole think tank talking about it. "The five minutes up?"

He nodded. "Just about."

"Then joy. Let's get back to think-tanking!" I cried enthusiastically, punching my fist in the air as the others started filing back into the room.

While everyone settled back into their seats, Max remained standing, drumming her fingers on the back of her chair. She waited impatiently for quiet, which she was eventually rewarded.

"Did you want to pass a motion, Max?" I asked. She rolled her eyes and ignored me.

"This arguing thing isn't working," she said, "so we're going to try to be nice about this now. Does anybody have any new ideas?"

"Three-person chess would be insanely difficult to create," I said casually, flicking a speck of lint across the table. I waited a second, then looked up to find all eyes on me, some more appreciative than others. I blinked and gave the epiphany gasp. "Ohh! You meant about the. . .yeah, right, I get it now. But no, I'm out."

After the chuckles died, Max looked around at us all again. "Anything else?" When no one responded, she let out a long breath and picked up her legal pad. "So should we just agree to quit for today? I mean, we tried, but nothing's come up-"

"Because someone's not helping," Aqua muttered.

"Stop," Max barked before Dylan could even retort. "_Don't_ start fighting again. It doesn't help."

Dylan clenched his jaw and, with what appeared to be a great restraint of venom, said, "What I just don't get is why you all keep looking at me to confirm your stupid theories. I just don't _know_ whether or not any of them are right, okay?"

"We realize that," Max said placatingly. "It's just. . .hard to cooperate right now. Maybe if we quit for a while-"

"Thank _God._ This think tank thing sucks," Frankie said. Then he looked around guiltily. "Oh. Uh, sorry."

"It's okay," I assured him. "It was my idea, and even _I_ think it blows."

"What I _mean_ is that maybe we should just try again tomorrow," Max said. "It's not like we're in any immediate danger, right? We can take some time with this."

"So getting Sy back isn't top priority anymore?" Dylan said jadedly, flicking an old Cheeto off the table. "You guys must be starting to like me."

"You keep thinkin' that, buddy," I said, and he sent me a low-key glare.

"Is there any way we can access those files?" Fang asked suddenly.

Max looked around at him. "What files?"

"You said something about having access to our files," Fang said, looking at Dylan.

He quirked an eyebrow. "Yeah, so?"

"So is there any way we can find those again? And look up not only you, but everyone else whose had this happen. Maybe the whitecoats knew something about it, took notes."

"We already said the others didn't have the same balance of DNA," the twins said. "They're not viable comparisons."

"What about Shark and Jaxx?" Wave chimed in.

"Who?" Max looked confused now.

"They were with us in London," Kyla explained. "They were red, like Ariel, but younger, twelve and fourteen. _They_ had the same balance as us, didn't they?" She looked around to the other fish-kids for confirmation.

"It's roughly three percent in you guys, right?" Blaze questioned.

"Three point eight," Dylan replied automatically. "And yes, everyone in London had an equal balance of DNA. That was part of the deal between the three groups. You guys excepted, of course." He nodded at Max.

"What's that mean?" she asked suspiciously.

"Swift," Blaze said. "He's got more avian DNA than the rest of us. And Avi too, hers was grafted into her post-birth."

"Right," Dylan agreed. "But in order to keep you all together, they were allowed to compete."

"But what about those files?" Fang persisted. "I know we lost our old laptops, but maybe we could go to the library-"

"Why not just use Frankie's computer?" Wave said flippantly.

Max blinked, and I saw a shift in her eyes. They'd gone from a little harried to narrow and irritated. I was guessing only some of us had known about the laptops, then, because Fang and Kyla looked surprised too. It made sense, really. As many things as Max had stolen in her time, she probably wouldn't approve of theft from an honest business. And secrets are best kept when not everybody knows about them.

Everyone fell into an awkward silence, averting each others' eyes and trying to ignore Max's annoyance, which was steadily rising and becoming almost tangible.

"Frankie's what?" she finally asked.

"Nothing," Frankie mumbled, picking at the table.

"Do you have a computer?"

He didn't answer at first, but then, unable to keep quiet anymore, Frankie said lamely, "Blaze does too."

Blaze's protest was automatic. "So do the twins!"

"It was Con's idea!" Arthur and Aqua claimed in unison.

"What's going on?" Max looked around at each of them, and at me, too, probably because she just assumed I'd been in on it. Which I hadn't been, for once. "How many computers do we have here?"

"Five," Wave said meekly.

"_Five_ computers?" Max cried. "When did this happen?"

"They fell off a truck," Arthur said.

Max's eyes narrowed and she put her hands on her hips. "Really," she said, drawing the word out and layering it with sarcasm. "Five laptops just fell off a truck and landed in perfect and usable condition."

"Hey, we thought it was weird too, but you don't look a gift horse in the mouth," Aqua said with a shrug.

Max sighed irritably and, after a moment's deliberation, moved past it. "Fine. Whatever." All business again, she picked up her pen and tapped it on the table. "But say we take these laptops and try to find our old Itex files. Could we even do that?"

"Probably," Joey said. "Depending on who we had looking."

Max nodded at him. "We can have Nudge do it. She's good with computers."

"And Swift, too," Blaze added. "He's the one that tracked your guys' emails when we were after you."

"I didn't know that," Iggy commented. "That's cool."

"I wouldn't put it past Constantine to know where to find everything, either," Dylan said lazily. He flicked away another Cheeto crumb, ignoring the questioning looks. "Given that Sy and I are out of sync, we can't always trust what I think I know. And Con was always next in line on intel."

"What you _think_ you know?" I said with a smirk. "I didn't think you knew anything."

"To some people this constant putting down would be discouraging, but I find it refreshing." Dylan pushed his chair back and stood up again. "Are we done here, then?"

"No," Max said shortly, and pointed down. Dylan rolled his eyes and sat. "Even if we had our best trackers trying to find these files, can we be sure they even exist? Or that there isn't anybody waiting around for somebody, namely us, to find them?"

"Uh, dude. Do you think we're stupid?" Blaze asked. Max glared at her and she chuckled. "We have ways to prevent leaving tracks, Max. Unlike you, we were actually fully trained in this stuff. We'll be fine."

"If you say so," Max said grumpily. Then she stood back, pushed her chair in, and gestured for the door. "Then let's get to it."

"What, like now?" Frankie asked blankly.

"Yes, now. Did you want to wait another week so we could all be best friends with Dylan?" Max demanded. Then she winced and looked at him apologetically. "No offense."

Dylan didn't seem to care anymore. He shrugged a shoulder and responded with, "Eh."

Still looking a little guilty, Max again waved toward the door. "So come on. Let's go, get those computers and start tracking."

Wow. As much as Max and I. . .well, how should I say this. . ._differ_ on our ways of handling things, I must say I was impressed. Took her two minutes to get us up and active on the whole Dylan/Sy issue. And she even made sure to cover the bases on the vague possibility of getting caught. Nice.

There was a low scuffling as we all stood up and reset the chairs to their correct spots around the room. Kyla made it to the door first and had just pushed it open when, from two floors up, we heard a faint explosion. The ceiling vibrated, and I instinctively looked at Iggy. He was smiling, and somehow he managed to direct his eyes right at me. I chuckled and his grin grew.

Sometimes I feel bad for Con. I really do.

But then I realize it's way funnier to keep on tricking him like this.

"What was that?" Blaze asked, noticing how Iggy and I were grinning like idiots.

"Trip wire bomb trap equals success," Iggy replied, and I gave him a high five.

"Totally," I agreed with a snicker. "But you know, I kinda feel like this is unfair. Technically, he didn't sleep last night, so daytime is like his nighttime. Waking up at four is actually early for him."

"Not if he went to sleep at three a.m.," Iggy pointed out. "That's over twelve hours of rest, that's totally free game."

"What if he didn't fall asleep until six?" I countered.

"It's his own fault for pulling an all-nighter," he decided, and nodded in satisfaction. "And hey, why are _you_ questioning it, it was your idea."

I shrugged. "He almost blinded me with a lightbulb," I said simply. "_And_ he tried to slit my throat with a pocketknife. Revenge was in order."

"It's probably best if you go get him, then," Max said, making me jump by appearing right behind me.

"What?" I whirled around to face her and her knowing smirk. "No way, I don't wanna die!"

* * *

Five minutes later and for the second time that day, I knocked tentatively on Con's door, hoping against hope he wouldn't pull the knife on me again.

Muffled cussing came to me through the door, and despite the fact that I was probably about to die, I laughed to myself. I wondered just how many bombs had been set off during the time it'd taken me to get from the basement to here. . .I gave a start as another explosion sounded, followed immediately by a wordless shout of pure rage.

I knocked politely again. "Con? Is everything okay?

A second later and he yanked the door open; I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing, or even smiling. Half of Con's face was streaked with soot, and his hair was sticking up funny. Little holes peppered his t-shirt, and his whole frame was draped with broken trip-lines. One of his ankles was even pulling on a live one.

And oh, the look in his eyes would have made a small child cry.

"What," he asked, his voice trembling with frustration, "could you _possibly_ _want_ from me?"

I took a short breath to kill the laugh in my throat and smiled innocently. "It's time to wake up," I said brightly. "We decided to look at all the fish kids' files for clues, and you're supposed to help us find them."

"What _for?_"

"So we can maybe see if there's anything in the notes that could explain why this happened," I explained.

"There _isn't,_" Con hissed. "I saw his file last night, and there are no. Notes. Now leave me alone so I can go back to sleep and then wake up and kill you later."

I blinked in surprise. "Wait, you. . .you saw his file last night?" Surely not Sy's, right? "How?"

"Because I _found_ it and _read_ it." Con left his door only to come back and shove his laptop at me. "If you want it, just take my computer and go through my history. And go. _Away._"

And then he slammed the door in my face.

". . .Cool." Threats and anger aside, I couldn't help but smile. I love it when I don't have to do work.

_BOOM!_

I jumped and fumbled with the computer as the door rattled in its frame, shaken by yet another explosion.

_"SPARK!"_

I held tight to the computer and ran.

* * *

yep. still got nothing to say.

'nother chapter tomorrow.

kthanksbye


	8. Chapter 8

this chapter was originally uploaded on leap day.

i rushed so hard to finish it before midnight, and at first i didn't think i did, but my computer's clock was faster than the site's clock, so it updated in, like, the very last minute of leap day.

it was one of the high points of my existence.

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride.

* * *

_**8. and i thought it couldn't get aaaaannyy worse. . .**_

"Why was he even looking at Sy's file anyway?" Kyla asked, peering over Swift's shoulder at the laptop.

"No idea," I replied, scanning the lines of text as they scrolled down the screen. I'd have to remember all this, since we didn't have a printer to print it all out on. "Maybe he was being a creepy stalker. Or maybe he was just trying what we're trying."

"If that were true, then all the other files would be here too," Blaze objected. She tapped a notepad upon which she'd copied down Con's recent internet history on. When we'd checked it, all we'd found were Sy's file, his mother's file, a Google search about the Coca-Cola formula, and a website that held all the episodes of _Death Note_. "He doesn't half-ass things like this."

"Maybe it just took him forever to find Sy's, so that's the only one he looked at," Iggy suggested.

"No, he still would've stayed up to look at the others," Wave said. Then she grinned. "I'm voting that he's secretly in love with Sy and was trying to find out everything about him."

Blaze rolled her eyes while the rest of us snickered. "Oh, right, totally."

"What? He liked Spark for a while, but after she rejected him he could've boarded the dude train. And to get back at her he's going after Sy. How vengeful."

"Well, you can't blame him," Dylan said, smirking. "We _are_ incredibly sexy."

"Speed-read done." I turned from the computer screen to the legal pad and started writing out all the information, calling upon memory to get it right. "Find someone else's."

Swift just clicked on a link and a new tab opened up - this document summed up the purpose of the fish group, and listed all the experiments by number along with code name or gender. Subject 1, a.k.a. Little Mermaid, a.k.a. Ariel; Subject 2, a.k.a. Project Poseidon, a.k.a. Dylan Westerfield; Subject 3, female; Subject 4, female; Subjects 5 and 6 (twin, fraternal); Subject 7, male; and so on. Then there were subsequent lists with other experiments, all the ones with altered shares of fish and human DNA. Those ones we ignored for the moment.

Swift clicked on Ariel's file next, and he and the others started reading through it. I only half listened as they commented on it, concentrating on copying Sy's file. Man I wish we had a printer. . .ah well. Can't have everything in life.

Once I was finished, I momentarily commandeered the laptop and scrolled through Ariel's file. My eyes sped over the lines, hardly taking in their meaning, yet recognizing them enough for retainment.

"Done," I said, and Swift went back to the list of hybrids. He clicked on Subject Three's link - a.k.a. Wave's - and the process began again.

We did this through everyone's file, then went back and really studied them, paying special attention to the ones that mentioned things about the red. It wasn't as helpful as we'd hoped - the scientists had documented little notes about the changes, but for all the _really_ detailed stuff the files tried to redirect us to "Hybrid Group 3 Defects," a document that we couldn't find due to a broken (or maybe nonexistent) link.

So once we got there, we were kinda stuck.

"So now what?" Nudge asked. We'd tried, for the most part, to keep the younger ones out of this, since we didn't want to worry them. But Nudge was a freaking whiz with computers, so while Swift had been directing us through what Con had found, she'd been busy trying to dig up more info, with little success.

"Any way to fix it?" Blaze asked, referring to the link.

"Probably not," Swift answered, but his hands were already flying over the keyboard. A black dialogue box popped up on the screen, followed by another and another, and all of them seemed to be streaming lines of white coded text. It made zero sense to me. "Need the document."

"Any way to find the document without the link?" I inquired.

"We could try," Nudge said, and then she, too, started attacking her keyboard. "We'd need some time, though."

I sat back in my chair, stretching my hand. It'd cramped up somewhere around Subject 6 (who, by the way, is Arthur). "You'd think Con would've told us that he didn't find anything," I said.

"Maybe he was too busy avoiding the bombs you planted in his room," Max said, smirking. I shrugged.

"Let's not assume things."

"I thought we agreed he was only looking at Sy's file due to a secret creepy love affair," Wave said.

"It's not an affair if it's unrequited," Dylan said, sounding bored. I glanced at him - while Max, Fang, Iggy, Blaze, Kyla, Wave, Swift, Nudge and I were all at one end of the dining table, he was isolated at the other, head on his hand, flicking at microscopic bits of dust. "Sy only likes her." He gestured vaguely at me.

"Aw, how sweet," I said, only half-sarcastic.

"Nah." Wave shook her head. "I'm still voting for the gay love aspect. It brings their triangle into a whole new light."

I glanced around at her in confusion. "What triangle?"

"You, Con, and Sy," she replied, as if it were obvious. "We all _thought_ it was focused on you, but it would appear it's focused on Sy instead. Isn't that a wonderful twist?"

"There's no triangle," I said flatly. Then - because, yeah, while it was practically impossible, her gay love idea amused me - I smirked and relented. "Well at least, none that are focused on me."

"So says the Con-kisser," Kyla quipped.

My smirk disappeared as Max looked up, eyebrow raised. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Man, I _really_ needed to stop giving her opportunities like that. Now _everyone_ was gonna know.

It was scary how easily all the others got off topic, branching off into the whole love-triangle thing. It was like they hardly cared anymore that Dylan and Sy had switched. I sighed, dragging the legal pad toward me and flipping through the chicken-scratch that was my handwriting. Flipping through the files, I felt my usually lighthearted soul die a little. Was I going to have to do this by myself? Shoulder the serious crap and let the others have fun?

I frowned. That was _so_ not how it was supposed to work. Max or Con did that shit, not me. I wasn't a leader. I was a goofball, a hyperactive spazz. _I wasn't trained to be a leader._

Given, that's my _own_ fault, since I ran away, but still. I don't regret what I did, not even now.

* * *

Night came quickly, sneaking up on me without warning. Leaving the others to do whatever it was they wanted to do, I'd taken all the files and retreated to my room, going over them again and again, looking for something, _anything_ that could help.

I lingered particularly over Ariel's file, and even used Con's computer to check out the facts on those other kids, the unbalanced ones. Even though they weren't very reliable comparisons, these guys had to be the key, I just knew it. Something about them, something about their reactions to the red, some minor detail that made them different than the crazy but kindhearted Kyla and Wave. . .

It had to be _something._ Something. . .

If only I could find them. . .talk to them. . .

But that was impossible. They were dead.

Like Leander.

_"At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero the fair, whom young Apollo courted for her hair, and offered as a dower his burning throne, where she should sit for men to gaze upon."_

I started and sat up from my desk. Then I froze, because I so did _not_ recognize where I was. I blinked, hard, but the unfamiliar room stayed. At some point I must have fallen asleep, and started dreaming, because I sure as hell wasn't in my room anymore. Instead, I was in some weird kind of study, lined with book-filled shelves and littered with cushy furniture. The low lighting sent shadows dancing in the corners.

And, in one of these dancy-shadow corners, in a deep red armchair, was Leander.

He was dressed like he'd been in Australia - all white, from head to toe. The only thing different was that the holster at his hip, which had once held a gun, was empty.

He was looking down, where a book was propped open on his lap, one golden-tan hand idly fingering the corner of a page. As if sensing my horrified stare, Leander looked up with those freaky pearl-colored eyes and smiled at me. "I did like your hair," he told me sincerely. "So much more vibrant than Colette's."

_Colette._ If there was one other thing that plagued my nightmares, it was her. We'd known each other less than a day, it seemed, and she'd done her best to survive and help me, but then Leander had killed her. Shot her, just like that. I'd done nothing to stop him, and what's more, if it weren't for my dumb luck, her fate could have very easily have been mine many, many times.

"Don't talk about her," I said, my voice shaking. Leander just kept smiling.

"I like what you're wearing."

"What?" I looked down - somehow I was standing, not sitting at the desk anymore - and saw I was wearing a long, impossibly blue hoodie, the same shade as Sy's eyes. As I stared, red streaks started seeping through the blue, obliterating it, changing it.

I looked up at Leander in bewilderment, but he was looking down at his book again.

_"Her kirtle blue, whereon was many a stain, made with the blood of wretched lovers slain,"_ he recited. Then he gave a dry chuckle and glanced up at me. "_Did_ you ever do away with those two? Westerfield and Constantine? I have wondered, you know."

My jaw clenched. "Shut up."

It wasn't like nightmaring about Leander was new. It happened more often than I'd like to admit. But something about this dream in particular, it. . .it was just _wrong._ I usually only dreamed about the memories, the awful things that had actually happened. This hadn't happened. This wasn't a memory that had been twisted and altered to be even worse than it was.

This was something entirely new.

"You know, I never really understood why _they_ were appealing and I wasn't," Leander said. "I mean, come on. _Let it suffice that my slack Muse sings of Leander's eyes, those orient cheeks and lips, exceeding his that leaped into the water for a kiss of his own shadow and, despising many, died ere he could enjoy the love of any,_" he quoted. Then he gestured to himself. "I was a frickin' catch. And yet you didn't see it, and killed me dead before I could prove myself. You're such a lovely girl, Spark."

"Shut up," I snapped.

"Lovely," Leander repeated. Always with a smile. He looked down and read from the book again. _"But far above the loveliest Hero shined and stole away th' enchanted gazer's mind, for like sea nymphs' enveigling Harmony, so was her beauty to the standers by."_

"Shut up!" I didn't know _what_ he was reading and quoting from*, but it was fucking annoying.

_"Thence flew Love's arrow with the golden head, and thus Leander was enamoured,"_ Leander said. Then he paused, scoffing a little. "What is that, a love at first sight or something?" He met my eyes and tilted his head. "Then again, that _is_ what happened. The instant they told me about you, I knew. You were _interesting._"

"Just stop talking," I ordered, though my voice cracked halfway through. Say what you will about his death being deserved or the right choice or whatever, but I still wonder what else I could have done. There could have been another way. I didn't _have_ to kill him.

But I had.

"It's true," Leander told me, eyes wide with honesty. "Really. _Albeit Leander rude in love and raw, long dallying with Hero, nothing saw that might delight him more, yet he suspected some amorous rites or other were neglected._ I only wanted you to _like_ me. I didn't _have_ anybody else. Nobody else was as interesting as you. And I liked that."

The sad thing was, I almost felt bad for him.

But then I reminded myself that he was a creep and a manipulator and a liar. Like Dylan.

"You're a creep."

Leander just smirked. "_No marvel then, though Hero would not yield so soon to part from that she dearly held._ I'd bet you'd feel different if you'd never met those other two."

"No, you're a creep either way," I assured him.

"By the way, how _is_ your precious little Fish Boy?" he asked with a knowing smile. "Since you ultimately picked him over me, I'd like to know how he's enjoying that."

". . .Shut up."

"Oh?" Leander actually moved now, closing the book and sitting up straight in his chair. "Did something _happen_ to him?" he asked, faking fascination. He knew, all right. (I mean, how couldn't he, he was a manifestation of my subconscious.) He just wanted to hear me say it.

"No," I lied defiantly. "He's just. . .he got lost."

This proved to be poor word choice on my part.

"Ahh." Leander set the book down on the arm of the chair and stood up. He very carefully straightened his shirt and then folded his hands behind his back. He stared at me, pearly eyes sending chills down my spine, and smiled what was probably the creepiest smile yet. "Well, _jewels being lost are found again, this never; 'tis lost but once, and once lost, lost forever._"

"SHUT _UP!_" I shrieked. All of a sudden there was a gun in my hand, and automatically I raised it and fired. The shot went in his chest, over his heart, but he didn't flinch or fall over or die or anything. He just kept standing there, crimson blood spreading over his shirt, staining the white with bright, bright red.

_"Jewels being lost are found again, this never,"_ he repeated.

I shot again, and again, but he still wouldn't die. Two more red spots showed up in his torso, and after he started walking towards me, I shot some more and got him in the thigh and the knee.

But he just. Wouldn't. Die.

I tried to shoot again, but the gun just clicked. I realized it was Leander's own six-shooter, and so I'd used up my six shots. Leander's cool hand came down over mine and pushed the gun down. Then he leaned forward and whispered in my ear.

_" 'Tis lost but once, and once lost, lost forever."_

* * *

I woke with a colossal gasp.

I stared blankly at the ceiling, heart pounding, breath coming in shallow bursts. Taking care to not look anywhere but the ceiling just yet, I fumbled blindly for the side table and groped around for the lamp.

See, childhood's a funny thing. All our habits, and the things we come to be afraid of stem from something we learned during those formative years. And thus, at fifteen years old, same as when I was five, when I woke up from my nightmare the first thing I did was turn on the lights, banishing all the dark-dwelling ghosties that lingered in the shadows.

A warm yellow glow bathed my room. I sat up and cast my eyes about. It looked the same as always - kinda bare, mostly clean. A pile of pillows was scattered over the empty twin bed pushed against the opposite wall, a place for Total to nestle in and snooze when he wasn't up to cuddling. Speaking of, the little dog was absent tonight. Probably off sleeping in the room of someone who _wasn't_ plagued with constant nightmares.

I quietly shifted the covers away and scooted to the edge of the bed. Curling my toes on the frame, I pushed off on the balls of my feet and jumped halfway across the room. Two more steps and I was at the door, flicking on the big light, adding a paler, more pastel yellow to the cozy gold that emanated from the lamp. Wings to the wall, I surveyed my room.

Empty.

I sidled over to the closet and in one quick motion pushed open the sliding door. It screaked in its track and banged against the end wall, revealing nothing but the t-shirts that hung innocently on their hangers, the stack of jeans folded neatly on the top shelf. Reaching across the closet's entrance, I grabbed the door and slid it back in place.

I sighed.

I flicked off the big light, then sprung away from the wall and leaped to my bed. For good measure, I leaned over the side of it and took a peek underneath. No monsters.

Well, except for the ones in my head.

_See?_ I tried to tell myself, my inner voice sounding chipper and kind. Sad that I knew it was only pretending. _Nobody's here but you. You're fine, you're safe. No worries. Hakuna matata._

"Hakuna matata," I mumbled aloud.

_Yeah, hakuna matata,_ the pretending-to-be-happy inner voice agreed. _No worries. You're fine, okay? You don't need anybody right now. You're good!_

Tch. Yeah, right. Despite myself, I found I could murmur on with a few lines of the song. Only it was all lonely and slow and depressing, the way Timon sang it after Simba and Pumbaa left him in _Lion King 1 1/2_.

"Hakuna matata. What a wonderful phrase," I half-sang. "Hakuna matata. Ain't no pass-in' craze. It means. . .no worries. . ."

I heaved another sigh and dragged my knees up to my chest, hugging my shins.

"For the rest of your days," I whispered.

As much as the inner voice tries to help, it's kind-of a bad therapist. It just ignores the problem and tries to focus on unrelated, happy thoughts. Which would be cool and all, if it didn't totally suck at it.

God, I hated this. Half the time I don't even remember my dreams, but if they're especially crazy or weirdly foreboding then they'll stick in my head for a good couple days. Nightmares were even worse - they could get so bad that I'd be afraid to go back to sleep. And yeah, this one had been a doozy.

Leander's ghostly laugh echoed in my head. I shuddered.

I gave up on consoling myself and already had my hand on the doorknob when I remembered something vitally important to my post-nightmare routine: Sy was gone. I usually went to bug him whenever something like this happened, but now stupid Dylan was in his place. My nightmare-go-away specialist was MIA. And even if I _could_ go without Sy's trademark calm-down voice to talk me down out of the fear, I doubted Dylan would be very snuggly. Plus, it would just be awkward. Considering I kinda hated him and all.

Clenching my jaw and fighting back sorrow, I turned around and went back to my bed. I turned off the lamp and burrowed deep under my blankets, sheer willpower the only thing managing to keep me from screaming in frustration.

There was nothing I could do.

Nothing any of us could do.

* * *

*note: all those italics during leander's dialogue are quotes from christopher marlowe's _hero and leander_. (it's actually creepy how much it can apply here.)

i'm catching up to real time, almost. i should probably think about finishing chapter 14 so it'll be ready for updating.


	9. Chapter 9

i like this chapter. it goes into dylan's mind in a way i haven't really done before. i mean, i've sorta used his pov before, but never to really go into the past or anything. it was interesting.

that is all.

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride.

* * *

_**9. mighty mom to the rescue**_

But then, just like that, Superman came to save the day. Or rather, Super_girl_ did.

. . .Nah, wait, that makes her sound all noble and kind. Uh. . .the Amazing Doctor-Lady? Dr. Savior? Super-Doc? No! Crap! Why did all these names sound all superhero-y and nice? I needed a, a. . .an _ambivalent_ name, one that you can't be sure about, one that instilled both hope and distrust at the same time. She's-Mean-But-Kinda-Helpful-Too Woman?

Because - and believe me on this one - as grateful as we eventually were for Dr. Marein Westerfield's presence in our home, she sure as hell was _not_ a superhero.

It was somewhere around two in the afternoon when our doorbell rang. And that in itself was a rarity. Sure, we've got neighbors, but they're not very neighborly neighbors. Some of the snarkier ones had stopped by once or twice to complain about the noise (the impromptu pool party on our first night springs to mind as a reason), but for the most part we were left alone, which suited us. But we hadn't made any noise today, or even recently.

"Who d'you think-" I stopped to yawn. "-it is?"

Con got up to get the door, and Dylan glanced at me weird from across the room. "Why do you keep yawning?" he asked.

"Eat me," I retorted, avoiding the question. It had probably just been an innocent, valid inquiry, because I'd yawned like five times during one _Phineas and Ferb_ episode, but meh. Before I go into the wow-I'm-so-alert-even-without-sleeping stage, I can get really cranky. And last night, I hadn't slept at all after waking up from my nightmare.

Dylan rolled his eyes, mumbling "Why do I even try?" before turning back to look at the TV.

I watched him - no, no, I _leered_ at him for a while after he'd turned away. If I'd had any thoughts of kind-of maybe trying to tolerate Dylan for a while, for at least as long as it took to get Sy back, those thoughts were gone now. Just. . .just _why?_ Why was he here? Especially after a nightmare like that, when I needed Sy most?

I mean, of course I'd considered finding someone else to talk about it with, but it was a brief consideration. Con probably would've actually killed me slowly and painfully for waking him up again, and nobody else really understood Leander's magnitude.

"I'm guessing it's a chick." I looked over at where Wave was sitting and she shrugged. "Con doesn't answer the door unless it is."

Oh. Right. The door.

"When's the last time anyone even came by?" I asked. Not that I particularly _liked_ thinking about Con's female escapades, but it was hella better than thinking about Dylan.

"Like, a week or something," Wave said. She suddenly glanced around, as if checking for small children and Max. But it was only us, and Kyla, and Blaze, and Dylan, and Frankie, and the twins, and Swift and Avi. And Total, who was sleeping in my lap. "Or maybe shorter, I could've missed the last walk of shame."

"Nah, I don't remember any from the past few days," Kyla agreed. "I'm gonna bet girl too."

"How do you think he knows?" Blaze inquired. "If he only answers the door for girls, how does he know if it's a girl or not?"

"Peep-hole," Swift reminded her.

"Oh." She frowned, then said, "So what if it's a dude? Does he just ignore him and leave the guy standing there?"

Wave gasped. "Oh, God, I hope not!" Turning to Kyla she asked with faked anxiety, "How many guys do you think have come to see _us_ only to be ignored because Con turned them away?"

I snickered as Frankie chimed in with, "You know what I don't get? He gets girls, but he doesn't even leave the house. How does that happen?"

"Maybe I'm just talented." We all looked to the door, where Con was leaning on the doorway to the hall. "Ever think of that?"

"You're overestimating yourself," I told him. "You don't have that much skill."

"Hey, just 'cuz you don't see it doesn't mean other girls can't," he quipped with a smirk.

I stuck out my tongue and made a choking noise. "Gag me."

"So who was at the door?" Dylan asked curiously. He was probably the only one that actually cared at this point.

For a second, Con hesitated, and immediately that set me on edge. Con's mind is like a whip, he's always got his answer ready. He doesn't think about what he says. Or at least if he does, it only takes him a split second to do so. So if he had to pause, it was either because he didn't know how to answer, or. . .yeah, because he didn't know how to answer.

And then there was the clacking of heels and Dr. Marein Westerfield stepped out of the hallway to survey the room.

The fish-kids all jumped up in alarm, even Dylan. Blaze, Swift, and Avi also stood, though more slowly and warily, while Frankie and I alone remained seated. Me mostly because Total was on my lap, still sleeping.

But he woke up soon enough.

"Why's _she_ here?"

"What's going on?"

"What'd you do?"

Kyla, Wave, and the twins flew into a panic, shouting uselessly at Con while the rest of us just sat there awkwardly. Marein rolled her eyes and scoffed at her previous charges, and Con waited boredly until the girls and the twins were all shouted out. I noticed Swift and Avi slip away to the basement, probably to warn whoever they could find.

"What's going on?" Total demanded grumpily, sitting up and shaking out his fur. Blinking sleepily, he glared around the room, his dark eyes finally landing on Marein. I didn't have to answer him, because he picked up on the situation right away. ". . .Oh."

I just blinked, taking in the woman standing at Con's shoulder. I'd never actually seen or met Sy's mom before, but from what I'd heard, she was _kind_ of a frigid bitch. Not, like, outright abusive, like the other scientists, but frig. She gave up Sy for experimentation as soon as she realized she was pregnant with him. She sure as hell wasn't Mom of the Year.

But she could've looked the part, though. She was tall, and thin, and really, _really_ pretty. Beautiful, even. Like a model. Her hair was bright blond, probably bleached to death, and her eyes were large and a darkish blue, a lot like Sy's. I could see a lot of him in her, actually. Same thin bone structure, same facial shape, same fair skin. Hell, even the way she stood was like him, all straight and tall and composed.

The look on her face, though, was very un-Sy-like. It was haughty and jaded, like she didn't even _want_ to be here. And she probably didn't, just like we didn't want her.

When it became evident that the tirade of increasingly insulting accusations wasn't going to end any time soon, Con pursed his lips and whistled, a single note so high and piercing it made the shouters shut up and the rest of us wince in pain. Total even yipped in surprise, it hurt his ears so bad.

"Are we done now?" he asked lightly, looking to Kyla, Wave, and the twins. The four of them exchanged uneasy looks but remained silent. Dylan - who hadn't said a word - just kept staring at Marein, his whole body tensed.

"It's pretty obvious that we have no idea what's going on," Con said. He pushed away from the hallway's threshold and came further into the room, coming to a halt behind the couch Dylan had been sitting on. Marein followed, but even when she came closer she remained. . .distant, somehow. "Now, you may not like it, but the scientists are the ones who know most about us. Believe me, it took enough just to find her."

"So _that's_ why you were looking at Sy's file," Frankie said, having just realized. "To find her."

"Duh. What, did you think I was just some creeper who stalked people's personal information in his spare time?" Con asked sarcastically.

"They were banking on secret gay love affair," Blaze told him, and his eyes widened indignantly.

"What?"

I opened my mouth to explain (and maybe jokingly defend) the theory, but then Marein moved. She'd been taking long, hard looks at each of the hybrids present, and now she was looking at Dylan.

We all watched in silence as Marein walked around the couch and approached him - he backed up half a step, eyes glinting with some red emotion. She looked him up and down for a moment, and then her expression shifted. She put on a caring, motherly look and moved closer to her. . .well, to her almost-son. She reached out her hand, as if to caress Dylan's hair. "Hello, honey."

Dylan smacked her hand away before she could touch him.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded. His hand was still raised, as if to fend off further attempts at contact.

Marein blinked, as if confused at his behavior. Then her expression shifted again, smoothing over into its previous haughty mask. "Your. . ._friend_ decided to track me down," she said, her voice careful and clipped. "He said you were having some sort of problem."

"It's _not_ a problem," Dylan snapped, and he made to stalk out of the room. "You can leave."

"She stays," Con said sharply, catching Dylan's arm as he tried to pass him. "And _you_ stay," he added, and from the way his knuckles whitened I could tell his grip was probably painful.

"I'm not a dog, Constantine." Dylan wrenched his arm out of Con's grasp and pointed at Marein. "You think I don't know what she's done?" he said furiously, eyes blazing. "I may not have been strong enough to take control, but I have been watching her from Sy's mind for _years._ I don't like her. I will not _ever_ like her. It's because of her that we're even _in_ this mess!"

By the end his voice had risen to an angry shout, something that never happened with Sy. In all truth, I think it was more the shock of it that kept everyone in place as Dylan turned and stormed off. Seconds later - he must've ran - we all heard the bang of his door as it slammed shut.

Blaze clicked her tongue. "Temper, temper."

"Look who's talking," Total said, jumping down from my lap. Blaze frowned after him as he trudged off to who knows where.

"Someone should go get him," Con said. "Dylan, I mean." He looked around, but nobody moved.

I raised an eyebrow, waiting for someone to step up, but, since nobody _did,_ I touched the tip of my nose and called, "Nose goes!"

There was a flurry of movement as everyone touched their nose. I looked around, but I couldn't tell who'd done it last. Frankie must've noticed too, because he knelt down and propped his elbow on his knee, saying, "To the knee!"

Everyone knelt. Again, it was all so fast nobody realized who was the loser.

This went on through a few more random bits - bunny ears, pirate, beaver, and even nose goes/to the knee again - before, finally, I waited a second too long when Aqua called "Dead grasshopper!" and everyone dropped to their backs.

Marein (who had seemingly deemed herself as above this sort of behavior) and I were the only ones left standing. I looked around in confusion at the others. "Wait, what?"

"That's the one where you have to drop to your back with your legs in the air," Aqua explained, kicking her feet.

"You lose," Arthur added.

"Wha - no fair," I complained as everyone rolled over and stood back up. Normally I'd've just laughed it off and gone, but. . .but. . ._nehh._ I didn't want to go comfort _Dylan._ He was mean. He didn't deserve my comforting. They couldn't make me! "I didn't know that one."

"And whose fault is that?" Con asked mildly, dusting himself off.

I pulled a face. "Ugh. _Fine._"

(Guess they could.)

As I shuffled across the room and headed for the stairs, I had to admit that I was kinda glad to go. It gave me an excuse to escape Marein. I mean, she was just. Like. _There._ Standing there, staring at us, judging us. Making us feel all awkward. It was a relief to leave, even if it meant going to find Dylan.

I dragged my feet a little as I traversed up the stairs and down the hall, going one past Con's room to get to Sy's. I raised my hand to knock when I realized the door was already ajar. I blinked. There had clearly been an angry slam just moments before. Had he left or something?

But then I heard Total's voice.

"Nobody's going to let her do anything to you," he said, sounding surprisingly reassuring and kind. "She's just here to run some tests on you and the others. To see if there's a reason that this happened."

"Yeah, there's a reason," Dylan said darkly. "And it's her. It's because of her that Sy is who he is, and because of who he is, that's who I am."

"That isn't the issue right now," Total said decisively. "You're being childish."

"I don't care," Dylan retorted. "I don't want her here."

"You can always vent about her behind her back like every other angst-ridden teen," Total told him. "But for now, it's probably best to go through the motions. Okay?"

It took a while, but finally Dylan sighed. "Yeah, fine. Whatever."

I half-smiled and nodded to myself, thinking that Total had some mad therapist skills, when all of a sudden I heard his tags jingle on the other side of the door. Not wanting to get caught eavesdropping, I leaped lightly to the left and ducked into Con's room to hide. I waited until their steps had faded, then stuck my head out into the hall to make sure the coast was clear.

What was it I'd just heard?

* * *

After slamming the door, Dylan stalked to his - well, _Sy's_ bed and threw himself down. For a while, he just lay there, wondering if just burying his face in the pillow was enough to suffocate him. Guessing that it probably wasn't, and resigning to the fact that somebody would (probably) be mad if he hurt Sy's body, Dylan rolled over and stared at the ceiling.

_Where are you?_ he thought miserably. _Just where in the hell _are_ you?_

He shut his eyes and tried, again, to find Sy, to sense any trace of him, but all he could access was his own thoughts. His own emotions, his own memories, his own mind. Nobody else's.

He could remember the first time he'd realized there was more than one person in his body. Dr. Westerfield, Marein, _Mom_ was doing a test. He was sitting at a desk and Mom set out an array of jewels in front of him. All diamonds, some real, some fake. He was supposed to pick out the fake ones and throw them out, and if he got it wrong, Mom would yell.

He picked one out of the pile and held it up close to his eyes, examining it. He squinted, and saw no flaws. No gem was absolutely perfect - this one was fake.

He put it down, starting a new pile, and began checking through the others.

He methodically went through the diamonds, separating them, until he finally came across one where he couldn't be sure. It _looked_ synthetic, but it also had the telltale flaws of something natural. Maybe someone had faked it, then hit it with a hammer or something. But. . .no, it had to be fake. He was certain.

Dylan _wanted_ to put it with the other fakes, but instead, something made his arm put the forgery with the real ones. Almost immediately a metal ruler came down and smacked his knuckles, slamming his hand into the pile and scattering the jewels everywhere. Mom's voice cut through to his ears, shrieking at him for his mistake.

It happened a few more times - Dylan wanted one thing, but his body did something else. After a while he realized that something else was in control of his body. Some_one_ else.

And that's how Dylan came to realize that he was just a personality. When his judgments and thoughts began to stray from those of the one who was in control of his body. Over time, he came to realize that this other guy was weird - a lot like himself, in some ways, but for some reason he did everything differently than what Dylan would have done. When Dylan wanted to yell or lash out, the other kid just stayed calm and retreated. When Dylan wanted to go one way, the other kid wanted to go the opposite. It took months for Dylan to learn that this kid chose to answer to his project name, Poseidon, and it was years before Dylan was strong enough for Poseidon to even notice his existence. And as soon as that happened, Poseidon started doing everything in his power to not be Dylan.

Dylan opened his eyes and gazed at the ceiling, wondering what it was that had made Sy break. Before, Dylan had always snuck in during a moment of weakness, when Sy was preoccupied by worry or rage. And he'd always come back when Dylan wasn't able to stem the sheer force of his personality - like when Sy had been overcome by jealousy upon seeing Con kissing Spark on the ship.

But this time, there'd been nothing.

Something lightly scratched at the bedroom door. Dylan dropped his arm over his eyes, blocking out the world, and called out, "Go away."

But the scratch came again. Irritated, Dylan stood up, crossed the room, and yanked open the door, glaring down at where Total was sitting ever-so-patiently.

"You know, temper tantrums don't suit you," the talking Scottie informed him. Dylan rolled his eyes and went back to the bed, but he left the door open. Total trotted inside, using his tail to swat the door mostly-closed behind him.

"What, did they send you to come get me?" he asked venomously.

Total ignored it, using his wings to give him extra lift as he jumped up to the bed. He sat down, made a fuss about folding his wings, and then got right to business. "As far as I know, Marein hasn't done anything to _you,_" he said. "She isn't technically _your_ mother, is she?"

"Oh, so just because the puppy isn't yours means you're gonna watch it get abused?" Dylan asked bitterly.

Total gave a little scoff at the analogy, but soon moved past it. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Dylan took a deep breath and thought about how to explain it. Sy was better with words than he was - it was probably the only thing he really envied about him.

"In the beginning, I didn't have a choice," Dylan said carefully. "I _had_ to watch everything that Sy did, and I couldn't do anything about it. That. . ._woman_ down there messed him up so bad I'm surprised he's such a freaking nice guy. And that pisses me off, because. . .well, I'd've fought back!"

"Against Marein?" Total asked.

"Against all of it!" Dylan exclaimed. He sat up and looked at Total, who listened patiently. "Her, the scientists, everything! He just _took_ it, like it didn't bother him, but it totally did! And it bothered me too, but, unlike him, I couldn't do anything about it! It just. . .that's why I can't stand him. He doesn't do anything right."

Total paused for a moment, weighing the information held in Dylan's words. "But downstairs, it sounded like you were defending him," he then pointed out. "You said you know what Marein's done."

"She didn't _raise_ Sy," Dylan said in disgust. "She _groomed_ him. Trained him to be the perfect thief, the perfect escape artist, the perfect con man. It was sickening to watch."

Total nodded, as if he understood. "So now that _you're_ the one in control. . ."

"Yeah," Dylan said. "I couldn't do anything back then, but I can now. And I am _not_ going to let her touch me."

The dog took a little breath, then stood up and walked over to Dylan's knee, where he nosed at the boy's hand until Dylan pet him a little. Total looked Dylan in the eye.

"Nobody's going to let her do anything to you," he said, and Dylan was surprised to hear the sincere tone to his voice. "She's just here to run some tests on you and the others. To see if there's a reason that this happened."

Dylan frowned. "Yeah, there's a reason," he said darkly. "And it's her. It's because of her that Sy is who he is, and because of who he is, that's who I am."

"That isn't the issue right now," Total said, eyes narrowing. "You're being childish."

"I don't care. I don't want her here."

"You can always hate her behind her back like every other angst-ridden teen," Total said, and that made Dylan smirk. "But for now, it's probably best to go through the motions." He touched his cold nose to Dylan's hand again. "Okay?"

Dylan sighed and scratched Total behind an ear. "Yeah, fine. Whatever."

"Good." Total gave himself a shake, then jumped down from the bed and went for the door. "To the motions."

* * *

total's awesome. people don't use him enough in their stories.

or maybe they do. i'm horrible at reading other people's writing.


	10. Chapter 10

i went to the park today with my friend and both our dogs. it was decided they have a special relationship like that of Dr. Cox and J.D. from _scrubs_. i mean, they're both good-tempered canines, but they're also both alphas, so they both kept trying to walk in front of the other. . .

the dogs, i mean. not J.D. and Dr. Cox.

(by the way, my dog is the Dr. Cox in the analogy. he's too old for newbie shenanigans.)

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride.

* * *

_**10. science!**_

_It's because of her that Sy is who he is, and because of who he is, that's who I am._ What did that even mean? I knew Sy did his best to not be like Dylan. . .was that it? Was everything opposite? Like yin and yang, light and dark?

It took me a second to remember that I'd be expected downstairs. I _had_ been sent to retrieve Dylan, after all, and besides, I needed to know what the next move was. Was Marein going to whisk him off to some secret laboratory to run a bunch of psychological tests? Or just stay here and run a bunch of psychological tests? I'd have to know. So, blinking away my new theory, I left Con's room and followed Dylan and Total downstairs. I caught up with them at the entrance to the living room, but neither asked what I'd been doing. They were too preoccupied with the scene we'd walked in on.

The room's population had changed: Frankie and the twins had gone, with Max, Fang, and Iggy taking their place. The kids had all grouped together around the couch nearest me, Dylan, and Total, their backs to us; Marein was distastefully running her finger over the top of the TV, her nose wrinkling in disgust.

"Isn't there a place here that's _sterile?_" Marein asked, looking disapprovingly at her dusty finger.

"Wouldn't you know?" Max retorted, raising an eyebrow. "It's _your_ house, after all."

"Well, with the lot of _you_ living in it, I can't be sure of anything anymore," she replied haughtily. "Normally-" Here she turned on her heel, comically large purse swinging from her elbow, and walked over to the other room, leaving the rest of us to follow in her wake. "-I would conduct examinations _here,_ where I have equal access to the outdoors and the kitchen." She gestured to the large dining table and the windows.

"Of course," I agreed. Max and some of the others started and looked around, just noticing I'd returned. Marein's eyes narrowed. "That makes _total_ sense. That way you can watch the kiddies playing in the back while making a delicious dinner and cutting open the imbecile who tried to back-talk you."

She glared at me. "So I can keep an eye on possible other tests I'm doing outside while keeping my instruments in a sterile environment," she corrected through clenched teeth.

I nodded in understanding. "Right." My reason was more plausible.

"Well, I don't see why you can't carry out your original plan," Con stated. "Just clean the table and get a sheet or something." He looked to Blaze, who nodded and left, brushing past me in order to get to the upstairs and the linen closet. While she did that, Kyla slipped over to the kitchen and grabbed the Windex and a wad of paper towels to wipe down the table with.

Marein watched Kyla work with distaste. Actually, it seemed that everything we were doing was distasteful to her, so from now on, just assume she's got this haughty-bitch look on her face.

"Something wrong?" I asked innocently. She glared at me again.

"I shouldn't have to work like this," Marein grumbled.

"Oh, I'm sorry, would you prefer to _not_ have to examine your only child for genetic defects?" Max asked. "Because you're a little bit late to that one, all right, by about seventeen years."

Ker-_snap._ Talk about guilt-tripping. Points to Max, dude. I almost wanted to give her a high five.

A while later - after Blaze had come back with a clean sheet and Marein was finally satisfied with the room's cleanliness - she plopped her purse on the table and started unpacking various doctor's tool. She cleaned them next, which only made them look more menacing. At last, everything was set up, and Dylan was reluctantly pushed forward so he could sit on the table.

"So what all are you going to do?" Blaze asked as Marein took out a clipboard and pen.

"Just a simple check-up, that's all," she replied somewhat absently. Since none of us had made any remarks about her tools, she'd seemed to have calmed down some. Or at least, she wasn't entirely openly hostile anymore. "Then I'll draw some blood and run some other tests."

"What'll that tell you?" I prompted.

"On its own, not much." She scribbled some preliminary notes on her clipboard, then strung her stethoscope around her neck. Like a real doctor. "That's why I'll be taking samples from Subjects Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Eleven, and Twelve as well."

"They have _names,_" Max said indignantly. "Why don't you try using them for once?"

"Why should I?" Marein replied flippantly. "That would only build unnecessary bonds." Marein's hand, holding the scope part of the stethoscope, darted up Dylan's shirt to listen to his heart. Her other hand reached around and landed lightly on Dylan's spine. "Sit up straight, dear."

"Wait. So you call the others by their subject names, but have no problem bestowing pet names to your precious son," Iggy said.

"A mother's love works in mysterious ways." Marein's hands switched places, the stethoscope now on Dylan's back, her other hand flicking his chest every now and then. (Don't ask me why, I've got no idea.)

Dylan scoffed. "Yeah, right. So that just explains away everything you ever did?" he demanded, watching Marein with contempt as she hung the scope back around her neck and picked up a popsicle stick and a flashlight. "Motherly love?"

"I have no idea what you mean." She poked his chin. "Say 'ah.' "

And so the exam carried on.

"I don't get it," Max said quietly to me. "Was she really that bad to him as a kid?"

"I dunno," I admitted with a shrug. "I never asked, he never said."

"Oh, she was bad," Kyla whispered. "Whenever the rest of us weren't testing, we could just hang out or whatever. But not Sy. She always took him back for 'special training.' " She raised her hands to demonstrate air quotes.

". . .Please don't tell me this is going where I think it's going," Iggy said awkwardly.

"What? Ew, no." Wave frowned at him and said, "Marein's just a pampered little bitch of a princess and wanted Sy to be the same way."

"You mean a princess?" I said.

"That would explain a lot," Con mused, and I punched his arm.

"She means she wanted Sy to be an upper-crust snob like she is," Kyla explained. "Nice clothes, nice watches, perfect manners, perfect insults. It was like she trained him to be this jackass pretty boy."

"Well mission accomplished," Con said. "He's a jerk."

"Only to people he doesn't like," I retorted. "Like you."

Before he could snap back, Marein's voice overrode him, bringing our attention back to the examination. "Now, what sort of exercise regimen have you been following?" she asked Dylan, hitting his knee with a little hammer. His foot twitched.

"Hell if I know," Dylan said sullenly. "I just got here."

Annoyed, Marein turned on the rest of us, eyebrows raised expectantly. We all just looked at each other.

"What do you mean by _exercise regimen?_" I finally asked.

"How does he exercise?" she said, sounding irritated. "Running, swimming, sports?"

"Oh." I smirked. "Yeah, it's sports. We play bocce ball every Wednesday. And lawn darts on Tuesday."

"Not to mention Extreme Archery Thursdays," Kyla chipped in.

"And Friday Fencing tournaments," Wave laughed.

"And. . .uh. . .Monster-Hunt Mondays?" Unable to think of another ridiculous sport, I shrugged and added, "But on Sunday we rest. It _is_ the Lord's day, after all."

Marein scowled, unamused by my antics. "I am _trying_ to help you here," she said impatiently. "In order to do that, I need. To know. Everything."

"We're kids," Max said plainly. "What d'you _expect_ we've been doing?"

Marein's eyes narrowed skeptically.

"We laze around here all day," Con said flippantly. "We sometimes have Nerf wars or play other games, but we don't make a habit of anything. None of us do."

"That's not true. _We_ have habits."

A good number of us gave a start, turning to look at the newly-opened basement door. The twins had returned - inevitable, I suppose. They liked to know what was going on.

"We take swims every once in a while," Aqua said. "Us fish hybrids."

"And we have our suspicions about the others," Arthur added vaguely.

"Suspicions?" Fang echoed. The twins grinned wickedly.

"We're fourteen, not stupid," Aqua told him.

"Or deaf, for that matter," said Arthur.

"However, I feel as if I should mention that Duke Devlin is currently the only gold medalist in bedroom gymnastics. You're up against some serious competition there."

"Guess that explains all the practice."

The room went _silent._ Marein just blinked at the twins while the rest of us stood there, staring in disbelief/horror/embarrassment/whatever.

Me? Even _I_ was blushing. Especially since it was Marein, who was _Sy's mom._ It was _totally_ embarrassing as hell.

. . .But also kinda funny considering I wasn't the only one with cherry cheeks. I mean, most of us knew about Con and the neighbors, and sometimes Blaze and Iggy were just plain sickening to watch, but what was this, with Kyla and Wave? And, oh, gasp, even Max was looking uncomfortable! Did that mean she finally got over herself and hooked up with Fang? Dammit, I had to find out - I had money going on them.

Eventually, Marein broke the silence with a disapproving sniff. "Hmph."

Dylan, probably the only one without a guilty conscience, looked down at where she was fussing with her tools. "Something wrong, Mommy dear?"

"Please." Her own face beginning to turn pink, she scribbled furiously on her clipboard. "As if you weren't screwed up enough already, all this cross-breeding you're obviously doing is against everything we prepared for."

Another dead silence.

"I'm sorry," I said, my voice sounding strangled. "What now?"

"Did she say 'cross-breeding'?" Iggy muttered.

"Why _else_ do you think we created equal numbers of males and females in the major test groups?" Marein demanded. "That way when you got older you could reproduce and provide us with free new test subjects."

"That's sick on a number of different levels," Max said, fuming.

"That's _science._" All of a sudden Marein lost the blush, and continued on in a regular, almost matter-of-fact tone. "Though I suppose it won't matter. If the cocktail of attributes we put in your DNA didn't sterilize you, any offspring you produce will be. Not that I'd expect them to survive past a year or so anyway. Oh, I'm not talking about _you,_" she added conversationally, glancing at Blaze and Iggy while she picked up a needle and dug a vial out of her bag. She took Dylan's arm and pushed up the sleeve, swabbing it clean before stabbing him with the needle.

"Ow."

Marein ignored him, still speaking to Blaze and Iggy. "_Your_ children will be beautiful. The male's eye problems weren't genetic, and as I recall you've both got DNA from a similar family of avians. Perfect. . .specimens." She pulled the needle out and held the vial of Dylan's blood up to her face for closer examination.

Marein then busied herself with labeling the bottle while Dylan irritably tugged down his shirt sleeve. Meanwhile, the rest of us tried to digest what Marein had said, and just stood there.

So. Very. Awkwardly.

Sure, we had our moments where we made dirty jokes at others' expense, but really? We try to steer away from the more private matters of the in-house relationships. Mostly to preserve what innocence the younger ones had left.

I wondered, idly, how she'd pegged them as a couple. Standing next to each other? Maybe something had transpired while I'd been upstairs, to hint her off? I dunno.

"I'm done with you." Marein tried to touch Dylan's shoulder, but he jumped down from the table before she had a chance. She blinked, but then smoothed over the surprise with the scientific work ethic. She pointed at Kyla and Wave. "One of you now. Come."

The girls looked at each other, but Kyla was the one to walk forward. "You know, you seemed nicer at the Lab," she remarked.

"At the Lab I wasn't being forced to research with no pay," Dr. Westerfield replied grimly. "Sit."

We were all quiet a while as Marein began repeating Dylan's exam on Kyla, but then Wave spoke up. "Hang on a minute. There are _so_ not an equal number of males and females."

"Overseas plants had dozens more of you waiting," Marein said, writing something down on her papers. "We only focused our efforts on those of you here because I was the first to create you. The Salt Lake Lab benefited immensely from my skills."

"Yeah, you're a real genius," Aqua said sarcastically.

"All that effort, and yet none of us can even win at Mancala," Arthur said with an overdramatic sigh.

"Be quiet, you two," Marein said, not looking at them but frowning anyway. "You know what happens when you mouth off."

"What, nothing?" Arthur said.

"Yeah, you can't control us anymore," Aqua said tauntingly.

"We'll see about that," Marein mumbled, only slightly threateningly. If anything, she sounded more ticked than murderous. "I'll be checking you two next."

"Why?" both twins demanded in unison.

"Really. You should know by now the only thing you're good for," Marein said. She took a second to look at them and smile. "A boy and a girl, but still twins with almost exact reactions. The perfect controls."

Arthur scowled, and Aqua's face reddened indignantly.

* * *

Once Marein had concluded her examinations of all the fish kids in the house - some had had to be convinced more than others to do the check-up - she packed up everything in her purse, vials of blood and all. Each one was carefully labeled, and they clinked as Marein hitched her purse to her shoulder.

I'd wondered, momentarily, if asking for her help would have meant having her staying in the house with us, but apparently that wasn't the case. Besides, she didn't have the machines needed to run her blood tests with her; they were at some hotel in the city, with the rest of her luggage. So it was with much relief (on everyone's part, not just mine) that Max and I watched Marein leave. Even if it meant she'd only return tomorrow with results.

"Well," I said with a sigh as Max locked the door behind Sy's mom. "Now that _that_ crap's over, _I_ have some tests that _I'd_ like to conduct."

"What?"

I explained to Max what I'd heard Dylan say upstairs, and how it'd led me to the yin-yang theory of the two of them being opposite, psychologically. I didn't know what it would mean yet, if I was right, but hey, it'd be something. Just like Marein's blood tests - they may not mean anything yet, but at least they'd be some kind of results.

We walked back to the living room, where people were beginning to disperse. I caught Dylan before he could retreat to the basement and dragged him back to the still-sheet-covered dining table.

"What are you _doing?_" he asked tiredly as I made him sit in a chair. I went and sat across from him, ignoring the various stragglers who were coming in to stand with Max and watch me.

"Some tests," I said. He quirked an eyebrow at me and I shrugged. "Just fundamental stuff. See how different you two really are." I raised my hand and held it before him. "High five."

Dylan eyed me warily, then slowly complied. I noted that he used his left hand. As a secondary test, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a pen; I got up and grabbed a notepad from the kitchen, then offered them both to Dylan.

"Write your name."

"What's the point of this?" he asked, but he took the pen and pad anyway. Pen with his left hand, pad with his right.

"I'm just testing you. Now write." I watched as he put down the paper and scrawled his name upon it. "Now make an S." He did so.

"Spark, what are you doing?" Blaze asked, sounding perplexed. I guess Max hadn't filled anybody in during the wait.

"This is weird. . ." I mumbled, taking my pen back. Then, louder, I added, "Sy's right-handed, but Dylan's using his left hand. Also, he writes S's like a normal person, whereas Sy is stupid and writes his backwards."

"Backwards?" Con said disbelievingly.

"He goes from bottom up instead of top down and oh, my God, it's annoying as hell."

For a second I just got weird stares, and finally Fang asked, ". . .Why does that even matter?"

"Well, Marein's tests are fine and whatever, but they'll only make any sense to her," I explained. "I thought it might help to do some stuff that _we_ would understand, too. And now I know that they're opposites. Mentally."

"Why, because he wrote is name with the other hand?" Iggy said.

"Yeah. _And_ he was _cooking_ yesterday, and he didn't even destroy anything." At that I seemed to get some supporters, and I smiled. Then I blinked. "Ooh, I thought of another one." I turned to Dylan again, who'd just been sitting at the table in quiet bewilderment. "Stick out your tongue."

"What?"

"Just do it." He did. "Now go like this." I stuck out my own tongue and curled it so it looked like a taco.

Dylan mirrored it. I felt myself gasp a little more than I'd originally intended.

He frowned at me. "What?"

"Sy can't do that," I muttered, mostly to myself. "This is weirder than I thought."

_Because if there are some physical changes too, then. . .what would that mean?_

* * *

"These are the last of them, sir."

Joseph Stevens nodded, and his assistant placed the files on his desk. He waited until the man left, then pulled the folder towards him and flipped it open.

Inside were the copies of the files that they'd given to Leander, when he'd been alive. The files that the boy had obsessed over. Read over again and again. Smiled at. Laughed at.

A couple of pictures were paperclipped to the inside cover of the folder. The one on top showed a girl, mid-teens, blond hair, bright, golden-brown eyes. She was smiling, sending a crinkle through the scar beneath her right eye. Behind the head shot were other pictures, documenting the girl's other identifying marks: the black brands along her arms and shoulders, the scar on her left knuckle, the silver swirl under her left ribs. The faint scratch across her stomach, the tattoo on her hip, the four jagged marks down her left calf.

The wings.

Stevens hadn't been able to understand Leander's fascination with Spark. He admitted she was pretty, and yes, the tapes of her interrogation sessions were good for a laugh, but in the grand scheme of things she was less than nothing.

Stevens' mouth twitched in a frown. That wasn't quite true anymore, actually. Spark _should_ have been less than nothing, but that had changed. Yes, she had caused a thousand problems for Itex in the past couple of months, but that was before Stevens had bought the corporation and renamed it. Now it was his project, and he had done everything in his power to reform it to his own vision. Keeping only the very best of the experiments - only a few, really - and destroying everything else. Channeling the research on recombinant DNA into the reorganization of human genes. Making everything absolutely perfect.

And it had worked.

Until Spark had killed Leander.

Stevens closed the file and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath to steady himself. The boy had been so cute, so endearing as he pleaded for time with Spark. And, like an utter fool, Stevens had let him go. Off to capture her, off to spend some time with her, off to play before he killed her.

Stupid, stupid, _stupid._ Somehow, he'd managed to overestimate _and_ underestimate Spark all at the same time. He'd originally overestimated her, knowing that if she tried, she could change Leander and do what she wanted with him. But after Leander's report, after seeing her broken, he'd underestimated. No one could come back from _that,_ could they?

"Sir?" The assistant had returned. Stevens opened his eyes and the man said, "Sir, a loose end has turned up."

"Oh?" Stevens raised an eyebrow. Apart from Spark's group, he'd assumed there _were_ no other loose ends. He'd made sure of it.

"Yes, sir," the assistant confirmed. "Doctor Marein Westerfield, the head of Hybrid Group Three. She was hiding out in Canada, it seemed."

"Where is she now?" Stevens asked.

"With Spark. Our informants say she entered the house early this afternoon, and left a few hours later."

"I see." Stevens pondered the implications of this new information. If the children had stooped so low as to reach out to one of their hated creators, then something must be direly wrong. The fact that they'd even found her was hardly surprising - half the kids in that house had been specifically trained in locating wanted persons. But to contact her, convince her to come to them, and spend a significant span of time with them. . .

"We will have to set things in motion very soon," he mused. "Before their problem is solved." Looking up to his assistant, he ordered, "Tell the strike team to be ready. I expect to send them out within the week."

The man nodded. "Yes, sir."

After he left, Stevens turned to the files again. He opened the cover and picked out the top picture, the one she was smiling in.

She would have to pay for her crimes, this girl. And not just for killing Leander. Not just for killing his favorite child.

She would have to pay for destroying the world.

* * *

dun-dun-dunnnnn. . .

there are times when i put in scenes that are all foreboding and cryptic and whatnot and i ultimately end up never coming back to them. like spark's whole destroy-the-world thing, which has been mentioned before but never explored. it's sorta like the voice in the actual books, or a bunch of other crap JP has never really explained. i like to think that he's _not_ like me in the sense that he actually knows where he's going when he says his characters are made to save the world or whatever.

i, on the other hand, wing it and fly off like a retarded kiwi in hopes that my comedic appearance is enough to keep you satisfied.

i should really figure out what i'm even doing with this story.


	11. Chapter 11

dudes.

i've been on fanfiction for over four years now.

when did that happen.

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride.

* * *

_**11. of all the things to steal. . .**_

The next day went as the previous one had: it had its ups, it had its downs, but the overall final grade was a nice, resounding "suckish."

The morning was crappy, because the night had been crappy, because the day before had been crappy. So I wasn't in the best mood when the good doctor returned, having run her blood tests and whatever the hell else she'd done with her findings.

_I_ had the misfortune of answering the door, and she practically steamrolled over me without so much as a non-hostile greeting. It's like I wasn't even there. And, while she completely ignored _me,_ she was nothing but responsive to Con. Answering his questions, more or less, and even exchanging a bit of unrelated chit-chat.

It irritated me more than I liked to admit.

We made it to the kitchen, where Marein took her sweet time about getting settled in, which only annoyed me more. But, _finally,_ she was sitting at the head of the dining table, her purse at her feet, some official-looking folders spread out in front of her, a Starbucks to-go cup steaming gently at her left hand.

Huh. Left hand. Like Dylan, not Sy.

Max, Fang, Con, Dylan, the twins and I were spread out around the rest of the table - the others had been banished to the basement, with the older ones there to keep the younger ones back. (We would've banished the twins, too, but they'd threatened us with secrets.) But it probably didn't matter who was here and who wasn't, though. Twenty bucks said half of them were right on the other side of the basement door, listening in on the conversation.

Marein took a delicate sip of her most likely pretentious and European drink. My eye twitched.

"Well?" I asked impatiently, as soon as she set the cup down.

Almost as if she was deliberately trying to annoy me, Sy's witch of a mother shuffled through her folders, consulting her various printouts of the results. But, after I'd quelled my urge to flip the table, she finally said, "The preliminary results were inconclusive."

We all stared at her.

". . .What." It wasn't a question; my voice was flat.

"I'd go into a lengthy, logical explanation, but you wouldn't understand it," Marein replied, rolling her eyes. My own eye twitched again, and someone kicked me lightly beneath the table, a silent signal to cool out. "All I can tell you is that I don't see anything physically different between Dylan and the others."

I stared at her more. She just shook her head, sending ripples through her flawlessly bleached hair, as if even she didn't understand her findings, and went over her papers again.

"There's just nothing in my results that suggests Dylan isn't exactly the same as he was before this happened," she said. She picked up three sheets and flipped them around, pushing them down the table for us to see. I caught a quick glimpse of the names - Subjects 2, 4, and 6 - and lots of lines of black numbers before Max snatched up the papers for consulting. I wondered briefly if she'd understand what she was reading, but judging by the look that crossed her face I guessed not. Con, who was apparently more well-versed in medical jargon, picked the papers from her hands and glanced over them. Dylan leaned over slightly to read over his shoulder.

"His numbers are consistent with the girls," Marein went on, "which is to be expected, but they're also consistent with the twins, and the rest who haven't turned, which surprised me."

"Is there a difference between the others and Kyla and Wave?" Con asked, looking up.

Marein shook her head and slid him another sheet (Subject 5, I saw), which he picked up and studied. "No. It's consistent across the board. I guess I assumed as much, subconsciously, because every hybrid here has the same physical makeup. They all have the equal balance of DNA that we realized worked best for longevity. And from what I can remember of the studies we did on the others, those with more fish DNA approached this change at a faster and more dangerous rate."

"Dangerous?" Max echoed. "How do you mean?"

"They became overwhelmed by whatever it is that brings out the red and ultimately destroyed themselves," Marein said simply. "It was unfortunate, especially considering that there was never anything to suggest that the same wouldn't happen to the ones with less fish DNA."

"Explain what happened with the crazy ones," Con said, eyes still flickering between the sheets in his hands. Dylan pointed at something on one sheet, but Con waved him off.

Man I wish I knew how to read blood tests.

"They were weak," said Marein. "From what we gathered whenever one of them started switching, the red side brought out the opposing forces in personality." At this I perked up, wondering if the scientists had picked up on my own theory. "If they were nice, they became mean, if they were gentle, they became violent, and so on. As every experiment reacted differently, we never established an exact pattern for the switches, but eventually they all remained red."

Well, as satisfying as it was to have other proof from my own findings yesterday, the whole "remained red" part bummed me out. But I cleared my throat and said, "Yeah, and from what the twins said, whenever that happened it was like the two sides combined and sort-of balanced out. Did you notice that?"

Though she didn't look happy about my contributing to the conversation (what did she even have against me?), Marein answered. "Yes, that's right. Though I wouldn't say _balanced_ so much as _cooperated._ One side was always more dominant - usually the red."

Crap. "Right. . .so, they also thought that this is happening to Sy because he's fought off the red side so much that it's become its own personality," I said.

"All right." She waited, but nobody else said anything and she frowned. "Well, what do you want from me? I'm not a psychologist, I can't confirm or deny the theory. I don't even have the equipment necessary to do a full brain examination."

"What d'you mean?" Con asked sharply.

"This house doesn't have a PET scanner, or an EEG machine, or an fMRI or MRI," Marein said exasperatedly. "And if you really want me to do a thorough job, I'll need all of them so I can take a look at their heads and see if that's where the problem is."

Well, okay.

Let's go over the events of the past few days, shall we?

1. Dylan is here.

2. We don't know why.

3. Marein came over.

4. She conducted tests.

5. Those tests were inconclusive.

6. She can run more tests.

7. But she doesn't have the equipment to do so.

"That. . ." I sighed and shook my head, lifting my arm to the table and dropping my head in my hand. "Just great."

"No big deal, then," Con said, sounding unruffled. "Just get the machines and do the tests."

"It's not so easy as that," Marein said, eyes narrowing. "Not many hospitals have portable MRIs, and even less would lend them out to independent parties."

Con set down the result sheets and meticulously set them in a neat, perfectly straight pile. "Then I suggest we don't go about it in a, oh, let's say, _legal_ way," he said lightly.

Marein frowned, but there was a grudging flicker of respect in her eyes. "So how do you suggest we proceed?"

* * *

Even though we were a few branches away from each other, I could just feel Con's tension rolling off him in waves.

"This is insane," he whispered.

"Be quiet." I was still a little snippish, what with the pile-up of crappy happenings, but my mood was getting better. The inherent thief in me liked what we were doing, and so I was content to keep it up.

"No," Con refused. I glanced up at him and he glared back down at me. "Look, I know I suggested it, but I only intended to carry it out after careful planning. This, what we're doing right now?" He twirled his finger around in a little gesture to our location. "This is stupid as fuck."

I just smirked at him and winked. "Aw, come on. Don't you trust me?"

"Yes, but when you do things like this I begin to wonder why."

Aqua snickered beside me while Fang, a few branches to my lower left, ignored us, eyes fixed on the trucks parked in the back lot of the hospital.

Yeah, hospital. Con had suggested we just liberate some equipment from one nearby, and Marein had reluctantly agreed. When given the choice, she'd gone with taking an MRI first, since it'd be easiest to get. Portable ones were just fixed in the trucks, like miniature exam rooms. And, since our activities would be easily noticed with a big honking truck in the driveway, we'd all agreed to take the truck, quickly run the tests, then put it back and (if possible) go inside the hospital and get the other machines for later, more private use.

So here we were, at the back of Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, spying on their MRI truck and waiting for the guard to leave it unattended.

It was just me, Aqua, Fang, and Con on this mission, and while I'd've liked to have a few of the others, I knew the blackbirds and super-strong fish girl would do just fine. Hell, even just Aqua would've done fine, but Max had insisted on backup. She'd originally wanted to come herself, but Con had overridden her and taken her place, which I was a tad thankful for. Because while I'll admit that Max is good, she's too much of a leader, and she'd've questioned me at every turn. And while Con would also question me at every turn, there was a higher chance of him following me with less animosity.

"They wouldn't just keep them in the trucks, would they?" Fang asked quietly, referring to the computer cart installed with the MRI-reading software. Of course, it would've been easier to just take the truck and download a bootleg version online, but she'd been adamant about getting a proper reading of Dylan's head (go figure).

"Doubt it," Aqua said. "Then just anybody could steal it and be good to go."

"Off to conduct painless head scans to their heart's content," I commented. Aqua laughed, but neither of the guys did. I sighed. "I don't get why anybody would want to steal an MRI. It'd just be easier to actually go to the hospital and have them do it, right?"

"We're stealing an MRI," Fang pointed out.

I paused. ". . .Point taken." I scanned the lot again and perked up. "Hey, look, the guard's leaving."

"He was bound to at some point." Con took a tired breath. "The one thing I like about hospitals is that they're usually lax on good security. People come and go all the time, so as long as you look innocent enough, they'll leave you alone."

"You've robbed a hospital before?" Fang said.

"Maybe."

I clicked my fingers to get their attention and pointed to the lot. "Look. Something's happening."

Yes, something was indeed happening. The guard had left the truck, all right, but he'd only gone to the back door to hold it open. We waited, and a few moments later, a man decked out in greenish scrubs came backing out of the building, dragging a giant AV cart complete with computer, wires, and everything. A second nurse was following him, bearing another cart laden with some containers. I squinted, hoping to see through the clear-ish plastic, but it was too murky.

It didn't matter, though. Because, wonder of wonders. . .

Fang's eyes narrowed. "What the. . ."

I smiled as I watched the guard and the man-nurse open up the truck, prop up a ramp, and wheel the computer inside. Then the other guy wheeled his cart up, too.

"Oh look, how nice," I said. "They're loading it into the truck _for_ us."

Fang muttered something under his breath, and Con was silent. I looked up, grinning, but he was just staring in stunned disbelief. At last he blinked and looked down at me.

Scowl on his face and voice full of contempt, he told me, "I hate you. Just. . .so, _so_ much." He shook his head in disgust. I laughed.

"I don't like this," Fang said. "This is way too lucky."

"Oh, that's just 'cuz I'm here," I said, flipping my hand. He looked at me skeptically and I smiled. "How else d'you think I survived this long? On my _smarts?_" Aqua snickered and I winked at her.

"It's true," Con said. "She doesn't have smarts. Just idiotic, unquestioning, dumb stupid _luck._"

I chuckled again as his intended insult trailed off into bitter realization. "Exactly," I said satisfactorily. Then I stood up on my tree branch and loosened my wings. "So what say we get down there before anybody drives off with my luck, hm?"

We took off from our lookout tree one by one, Con then Fang then me, with Aqua on my back. We all dropped low before whipping out our wings and coasting down the hill. We were more concerned with actually getting the truck than being seen, so we went fast, skimming only a few feet above the ground. Once we got down to the lot, Fang and Aqua took the left, and Con and I took the right. Aqua, being freakishly strong, could push the truck to get us rolling, and once we got to the road I could do an instant jump-start. Con was in charge of driving, and Fang, with his camouflage ability, would be the lookout. And he'd try jamming the hospital's back door, if he could. To give us extra time, ya know?

Con clambered up the side of the truck and slipped in through the open window, not taking the chance of the door's slam being heard. I waited for his signal, which came quickly. No keys. He popped the hood and I climbed up on the front tire so I could reach, sticking my hand to the battery, a finger on each knob where you'd clamp the cables to jump it. Then I waited.

Fang suddenly appeared in the cab, and I saw him talk to Con momentarily. Con waved a hand out the window, and then the truck jerked.

I clung to the open hood, a little surprised that Aqua was actually fulfilling her promise. She'd never gotten to compete in the strength test back in London, so I'd never seen her in action, but frick. Granted, the truck was in neutral, but still. It was a semi-truck. Loaded with a frickin' heavy MRI machine and who knew what else.

Con wheeled the truck around, steering it out of the lot and down a back road that would, as we'd seen earlier from the air, lead to the freeway. I waited, hand on the battery, until we were good and rolling down the hill before I closed my eyes. An electric tingle raced along the scars on my arms, and I prayed that I'd charged enough static to get it to work.

There was a sputter and a grumble, but then the engine caught. _Yes!_ Upon hearing the engine, Aqua quit pushing and ran around to the truck's cab, half-hanging out of it and holding the door open for me. With some effort I shut the hood and jumped away from the truck, whipping out my wings to catch the wind. I drifted back and circled around to the passenger side, awkwardly diving past Aqua into the cab. I crashed into Fang, who slammed into Con, whose hand jerked on the wheel and nearly made us go off-road.

Aqua was laughing as she pulled the door shut and I disentangled myself from Fang.

"Smooth," she said. I smacked the bill of her hat and finally righted myself.

"If anything, compliment Con," I said. "Fang barely nudged him and he nearly made us crash."

Con scowled at the road. "Let's see _you _try keeping a truck straight with an elbow in your spleen."

"Your spleen's on the other side," I told him. "If anything, he hit your liver."

"My liver, then. Shut up."*

Aqua laughed and I sighed in content, sitting back in my seat. Life was getting better by the second. Stealin' cars, annoying Con, making people laugh. It was almost like old times. Except in old times, we'd never stolen anything as big or expensive as this.

". . .Huh."

"What?" Fang said, looking at me. I shook my head.

"Nothing. But you know, of all the things we've all stolen, collectively, I think this is the weirdest," I said.

He shrugged, and Aqua, after brief consideration, nodded. "Yeah, probably."

"Nah," Con said. I glanced at him and he smirked. "I've stolen a ocelot before. Cage and baby cub included."

God damn it. "Way to ruin my day, dude."

"It's what I'm here for," he replied good-naturedly. "Wanna hear how I did it?"

And as much as I was dying to know so that I could one-up him at some later point in time, I declined. Best not let him ruin my mood too badly; Marein would take care of that just fine.

* * *

As the last of us hopped down out of the truck, Marein sniffed disapprovingly. "It took you long enough," she complained.

"Hey, at least we got it, right?" I said defensively. My good mood was quickly evaporating now that I was back in the lady's presence. "Now you can run your tests."

"Did you get the other equipment?" she asked, raising one thin eyebrow.

"Yeah," Con said. "And there's some other stuff in there too, that we saw them put in. Didn't look at it yet, though, so we don't know what it is."

"All right." Marein flipped her hair over her shoulder and went around to the truck's back door. "I'll go in and start setting up. Get them ready."

I liked how she referred to the fish kids as "them." Not the kids, or the children, or the subjects, or the experiments. Just "them." As if she expected us to just know who she was talking about.

I mean, we did, of course, but that was beside the point.

While the others disappeared inside, I stayed on the driveway, stretching and spying on the rest of the street. A quick glance in each window showed no watchers, no suspicious neighbors. Probably 'cuz it was one o' clock on a weekday - everyone was off at school or work. Lucky us, huh?

"Did it go okay?"

I jumped and whipped around, finding Dylan standing behind me. He gave me a weird look.

"What, did I scare you?" he asked skeptically.

"Yeah," I said truthfully. "When you sneak up on me like a creeper like that, it's freaky."

The side of his mouth dropped in a frown. "Well, sorry. But did you get the machine okay? No problems?"

I blinked at him. "Noooo," I replied sarcastically, drawing out the word long enough to make him glare. "This giant truck behind me is actually used for transporting ice cream and kittens. Not very efficient, if you ask me, 'cuz the cat hair gets everywhere and makes the ice cream almost uneatable. But hey, who am I to judge Ice Cream And Kittens R Us?"

"I was only asking because I. . ." he began, then checked himself. He sighed irritably. "Look, I don't like this any more than you do, so I want it over and done with. If you screwed up and have the cops after us now, then-"

"I didn't screw up," I snapped. "They probably don't even know who took it."

"Fine. Is she in there?" he asked, pointing to the truck. I nodded and he skirted around me to go to the truck. I watched him stalk to the vehicle and clamber inside, frowning as he did so.

_But. . ._ I felt my own expression copy Dylan's, frowning in confused thought. _What was he going to say first?_ "Because I. . ." Because he _what?_ Was worried about me?

Oh, freak. I really hoped he wasn't coming to be used to me. And God forbid he actually start to _like_ me. We couldn't be friends! Just. . .just no! Not possible, not allowed. Could not happen. I wouldn't let it. Because if I started getting attached to Dylan, in _any_ way, then that'd just cause me unnecessary confusion.

Furious at the thought, I turned around and stalked inside, retreating to my bedroom and slamming the door.

* * *

*I TOTALLY FORGOT I USED THOSE LINES. SUCCESS. and that exchange is from waaayyy back in the super-first drafts of the story, mind you, back before i even had an account on this site. ah, the history. it's for opportunities like this that i always save every funny line i come up with. never know when you'll need it.

i also wonder why Con would ever have to steal an ocelot. a story for another time, maybe.

anyway, i'd like to take the time now to thank everybody who's been re-reading and re-reviewing this :) thanks for sticking around. we're almost caught up. just a few more days.


	12. Chapter 12

SO MANY KORRA FEELS TODAY. WHY WAS I GIVEN EMOTIONS. I CAN'T EVEN. THE FEEEEEEELS. WHAT IS AIR. HOW DO YOU CAN.

oh god, tumblr really has gotten to me. I SPEAK THEIR LINGO NOW. WHAT IS THIS THAT IS HAPPENING.

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride.

* * *

_**12. revenge**_

_Knock, knock._ "Spark?"

I ignored her.

_Knock-knock-knock._ "Open up. I have to talk to you."

Again, I ignored her, instead just burrowing down further in the comfort of my bed. I'd been getting about zero sleep since that Leander nightmare, so being disturbed even at eleven-thirty in the morning was trying my non-existent patience.

You would think that with all the trouble we went through yesterday to steal that MRI and the EEG machine (which had been on that second cart the nurses had loaded into the truck), Marein would be a little more helpful about using them. But _apparently,_ according to _her,_ there was very little difference between the brains of Dylan and the others. She held on to the EEG after we returned the MRI truck, but even so, it wouldn't be of anymore use until she could use it on Sy and actually compare his brain-waves to Dylan's.

Freaking _Sy._ How long had it been now? Four days? Making this day five. It'd felt like so much longer. I angrily punched my pillow into a more comfortable shape. He just needed to come back already, dammit. And then never leave again.

So, with this added issue to the pile-up of crappy happenings, you can only imagine the mood I was in when Blaze knocked yet again on my door, trying to wake me up and, most likely, go downstairs for more brainstorming with Marein about possible red-eyed switch theories. I swear, if things got any worse, I would start throwing things. Most likely at Marein.

_Knock-knock._ "Hello?"

Total shifted on the other bed, his collar's tags jingling. "I don't think she's leaving, Sparky."

Finally losing it, I grabbed up my pocketknife from the side table and chucked it at the door, shrieking, _"What the hell is it!"_

Total's ears twitched. "Subtle."

"Shut up."

"Wow." Blaze tentatively opened the door, picking up the knife from the floor and examining the dent it'd left in the door. Turning back to me, she held up her hands in a "calm down" gesture. "Um, first of all, _chill._"

I growled at her.

Literally. Like a dog.

It made Total chuckle.

She just stared at me in disbelief. ". . .Oh-kaaay," she said eventually. "There are some guys to see you downstairs."

"Tell 'em to go away," I mumbled, pulling the covers back my head. I heard Total sit up and shake himself.

"Hold on," he said. "Who are they?"

"They're feds," Blaze said shortly. "So I kind of _can't_ tell them to go away."

_Feds? What the crap?_ I warily flipped the blanket back and lifted my head from the pillow. "Feds? As in FBI?" She nodded and my heart beat quicker. "But. . .why?"

"They say it's about what happened in Australia," she told me. She crossed the room and set my knife down on the bedside table; I grabbed it up in my hand instantly, as if for protection.

"What, with the shows?" I asked, playing for time.

"No."

Well, frick. I stared at the floor, flicking the my knife's blade in and out. If they weren't asking about the shows, that could only mean they were here about. . .well, You-Know-Who. Not Voldemort, but the other guy. The one who actually had a nose, and white hair. I dropped my face back onto my pillow, half-wondering if I'd lose air and pass out if I stayed there long enough.

"Spark?"

How had they even found us? The fish-kids and even Marein herself had assured us that the house was impossible to link to us. Like, of course it could be found, it was in the middle of an upscale Santa Barbara suburb. But if someone had been trying to find us, as in _us_ specifically? No way. Marein had created a whole new identity to deal with the realtors and contractors, and had even paid in all cash. Itex had known nothing of it. So how had they made the connection? Had someone seen us?

"Spark," Blaze said again.

"Why. . .who let them in?" I asked at length.

"Marein," she said irritably. Sitting down on the edge of my bed, she ran her fingers through the red streak in her otherwise dark black hair. "She's such a dumbass, they flashed a badge and she let them right in. Apparently she thought she could play it innocent, claim we were just some church group or something."

I quietly cursed whoever had let her answer the door in the first place. "So what gave it up? That we were us?"

"Swift came in and they saw his feet," she said grimly. "He didn't mean to, but the guys figured Marein was full of it and realized they were in the right place. Asked for you."

"Why didn't anyone say I wasn't here?" I demanded.

"Because Marein-"

"Is a dumbass," I finished. "Of course." I finally sat up and let out a deep breath, mentally running through my options/ There weren't many. "Okay. I'll. . .pretend nothing happened. I'll play dumb."

Blaze cracked a smirk. "That should be easy."

"Shut it," I retorted. I glanced at Total and added, "Tell the others that's my plan."

He dipped his head and jumped down from the bed. Giving himself another shake, he trotted off to spread the word.

"You can just tell everyone upstairs," Blaze called after him. To me, she said, "Everyone in the basement knows. Swift ran to Avi, who ran to Con, who told everyone else to stay quiet."

I nodded. "Good, so we're on the same page." Wide awake now, I swung my legs out of the bed and walked over to the closet, searching for clothes. "Do they know anything already?"

"No, before Marein screwed _everything_ up, Max came in and started holding them off," Blaze explained as I changed. "You know, she's almost as good as you are at annoying people."

"You know, I've been told this, but I've almost never seen it in person," I commented. I smoothed out my hair with my hand, then grabbed a sweatshirt to throw over my back, hiding my wings. I turned around, smiling, but Blaze was just watching me skeptically. I'd expected a wry smirk, at least. Had she heard the uneasiness in my voice? I'd tried hard to mask it, but I guess it didn't come off too well. I'd have to fix that before I got downstairs.

"Ready?" Blaze asked. I sighed and nodded, sticking my knife in my pocket. I went to the dresser and swiped up the rest of my usual pocket litter, stowing it away as I headed for the door. Once there, Blaze flicked me on the forehead.

"Ow!" Okay, fine, it didn't actually hurt, but that's my knee-jerk reaction. I glared up at her, rubbing the spot, and demanded, "What was that for?"

"To get rid of the wrinkles in your brow," she said curtly. "You look too worried."

Damn. I took a breath and tried to smooth out my expression. It'd been a while since we'd had to do this. I could only hope one of the feds waiting for me had some sort of personality defect that I could make fun of. That'd make it easier to handle.

Unbidden, my mind drew up all the memories of the times I'd annoyed Max. Which was a lot. I knew she'd never in hell rat me out, but I still sent out a little prayer in hopes that she wouldn't piss off the fed dudes too bad. Who knew what they'd do to me?

Besides. I had to have _some_ of their patience to kill for my own.

Blaze led the way down the stairs; when we got to the front hall, we both waited a minute, listening in on the conversation in the living room.

"Do you know what her true name is?" a man's deep voice was asking.

"Aren't those, like, secret?" Max asked. "I read _Eragon._ If you know someone's true name, that gives you total control over them. No way Spark would give me that kind of leverage."

I felt a smile quirk at my lips, especially when I heard the man's irritated sigh. Blaze and I took the last few steps down the hall and turned right, entering the living room.

Marein was sitting primly on a couch, legs crossed, as if she alone was calm in the situation. Max, of course, was there, arms crossed over her chest, standing opposite the coffee table from two men in suits. One was older, maybe late thirties, and even a random guy on the street would be able to mark him as a fed. The other one, though also in a suit, just looked like a young classy dude, as if he wore suits because he wanted to. His eyes were incredibly blue.

Classy Guy noticed me and Blaze and nudged his friend, who turned. He tried to put on a smile, and I almost believed it. As Blaze and I walked further into the room, he met me halfway, hand out to offer a handshake. "Hello, there, Spark?"

"Maybe." Ignoring the suit's hand, I looked to Max, and she gave me a "don't screw it up" sort of look. I nodded at her and she took it as a sign to leave; Blaze crossed the room and she and Max retreated to the basement. Probably to tell everyone to be ready for anything. Marein remained seated on her couch, which was both slightly comforting and really annoying at the same time.

I looked back to the suit, whose hand was still halfheartedly held out. "I'm Evan Adams," he told me. Realizing I wasn't going to shake, he dropped his hand and gestured to the man standing over by the coffee table. "And this is my colleague, Matt Davis."

I gave Matt Davis a nod of acknowledgement. "There an _agent_ part of those names that I didn't hear?"

". . .Um." Adams looked uncomfortable, and Davis smiled.

"I'm just a consultant," he told me.

"Peachy. And you?"

Adams sighed, hand going into his jacket. "Yeah, I'm an agent." He flipped his wallet and offered it to me. I didn't take it - fingerprints, ya know - but studied it carefully anyway. ID with the right name and picture, fancy federal seal, and a pretty legit-looking badge. "FBI. And I need to ask you some questions."

"Can _he_ ask them?" I sidestepped Adams and started walking over toward Davis. Taking up a post behind Marein's couch, I smiled innocently and tilted my head. "He looks nicer."

"He's just a consultant," Adams said, sounding irritable as he came back to stand by Davis.

"Exactly," I agreed. "There's no penalty if I lie to _him._"

"There isn't," the agent said tightly. "But honesty's always the best policy."

"Ahh. So you're one of _those._" I bet he wouldn't like my jokes, either.

". . .Right." Adams watched me a second, then shook his head and pulled out a little notepad and pen. "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm going to be asking you questions, and you're going to be answering me. Is that clear?"

I nodded. "Like butter."

"Good." Then he paused, realizing that it made no sense. I saw the consultant guy try to hide a smirk as the agent guy shook his head again and went on. "So. Dr. Westerfield here-" He gestured to Marein, who nodded politely. "-said that you go by Spark, but Max said your real name is. . ." He consulted his notes before looking at me skeptically. "Topaz Soursop?"

The consultant guy snorted and I bit back a hysterical giggle. Oh, God. This was payback for me calling her Sapphire Starfruit, wasn't it? She must've been holding on to that for _months._ She might've even looked up weird fruits to call me! What the hell _was _a soursop, anyway?*

"Now, we both know that's a lie, Spark."

"How can you be sure of that?" I asked, trying hard not to laugh. " 'Cuz you know, we're a real old Swiss family, us Soursops. We make watches for a living. My uncle's pretty good at it, but I'm the one with the magic fingers." I waggled them. "I can make anything tick. And find out what makes ticking things tick. My brother's the real unlucky one, though. Not only is his name Ruby, but he's also got these really stubby fingers. Kinda like yours, Evan."

"It's Agent Adams," he said flatly. "And you know I could arrest you for lying to a federal agent."

"You don't know that I'm lying," I said innocently. "I really could be a clockmaker. How else would I know that it only requires a bachelor's degree in tickery?" To Davis, I added, "It's real easy to get, too, if you ever wanna ditch the suit. You could also minor in tockery, but it's not a requirement. It's like math class, you can get by without it."

Davis smiled again. "Good to know."

Ah, the fun and games we have when being interrogated. It felt nice to get back to my bad old self with annoying the authorities. And I was even getting those said authorities to laugh! Granted, it was only the consultant who was laughing, but still. Before I'd only managed to make the kiddies laugh. This was a definite step up.

Adams looked mad now. I could count the furious wrinkles in his brow, underneath his unnaturally stiff hair. "You need to stop lying to me, Spark," he said, in what was probably meant to be a threatening manner.

I heaved a dramatic sigh. "All right, fine. You got me. My real name is Fox le Renard. It's French."

Davis' eyebrow quirked up. "Isn't 'renard' French for 'fox'?"

_"Oui."_

Adams stared. "So you're Fox the Fox."

I shrugged. "My parents weren't the most creative of the le Renard clan."

"This is getting ridiculous." Adams, finally seeming to lose his patience, took a step toward me. "Spark, or Fox, or whoever you are, you need to come with us, because you're under arrest."

Well, _that_ will certainly change your tune. Startled, I scrambled back from Marein's couch; she looked up sharply at the agents, her legs uncrossing. Was she worried for me or something?

"What. . .why?" I demanded, glancing to the consultant for help. But Davis looked as surprised as I felt. "What the hell for?"

"The murder of Leander Stevens."

_Gettin' right to the point, then,_ I thought absently, and then I shook my head. "I don't know a Leander. You've got the wrong girl, I swear I-"

"Do we?" He pulled a sheet from his notepad and flashed it at me - I flinched when I saw a picture of Leander taped to the paper. With a satisfactory smirk, Adams went on. "We know you were in Australia, in the same area, around the time he died. Dr. Westerfield here confirmed it."

I glared at the back of her head, silently cursing her in all ways I could think of, and she suddenly stood up.

"What I said, _Agent Adams,_ was that the children here were on tour," Marein said coldly. Davis blinked in surprise; even I stared, dumbfounded. Was. . .was Marein actually _defending me?_ "While they were indeed in Australian territory, most of their time was spent in the air, flying to their separate shows. It's unlikely that Spark was on the ground and able to meet your Leander at the time of his death."

Chills. I glanced at Adams, but he didn't seem fazed. "We have witnesses who say they saw her leave his house less than an hour after he was killed."

_The hell?_ I thought wildly._ There was nobody around there! Not for miles!_ It took Sy, Con and me two tanks of gas to even make it back to civilization!

Of course I couldn't _say_ that, or I'd hang myself. I opened my mouth to deny being anywhere, but Marein's hand went up to stay me.

"You can't know for certain who, if anybody, your so-called witnesses saw," she said. I saw Davis avert his eyes and was glad that I was in back of Marein. I'd seen Sy glare at people before, all haughty with the underlying fury, and could only imagine it being worse on Marein. "I could take you to the city and find a dozen other girls who look like her."

Adams dodged Marein and seized my arm, dragging me forward and wrenching my sleeve up. Davis's eyes widened as he caught sight of my scarred skin. "But a dozen other girls don't have these, do they?" Adams asked, sounding pleased with himself. "These marks? What are they, anyway, a tattoo?" I snatched my arm back, scowling as I tugged my sleeve back down. Even Marein seemed at a loss for words.

Fuck Leander. Fuck him violently with a fiery, burning, soul-reaping chainsaw wielded by a red-headed transvestite Grim Reaper called Grell.** That white bastard just wouldn't leave me alone, even in death. Of course it was obvious that I'd killed him - after all, he'd been sent to kidnap/kill me in the first place - but how had the FBI found out? Leander didn't technically exist, did he? He was an experiment of Itex. He should be no better than an illegal immigrant. No papers, no records, no-

Adams went for his cuffs, and there was a light _slap_ as his wallet dropped from his pocket; it fell open as it hit the floor. I saw the ID, and it said Evan Adams, but the badge that went with it suddenly didn't look so legit anymore.

I had the worst feeling that he wasn't really FBI.

I shoved him, shrieking, _"Get away!"_

And I ran. I just _ran._

* * *

_"Get away!"_

That sound was what everyone had been waiting for.

As soon as word had spread that guys in suits had come to talk to Spark, the entire house had stopped being a sanctuary and become just another memory. Everything was dropped as the kids went on high-alert, waiting for the cry that would give the all-clear or signal them to run.

They'd planned for this. Of _course_ they'd planned for this. Teams had been set up, routes had been mapped out, meeting places had been designated. There were even alternate plans with alternate teams, routes, and meet-ups: it all depended on the situation.

Spark's cry set it all into motion.

_"Get away!"_

And they were on the run again.

* * *

I ran for the stairs. Before anything, I had to get to my room and my backpack. There were about thirty emergency packs placed in strategic locations all around the house, but I had a separate one set aside for my own reasons. As soon as I got a hold of it, it was out a window and off to meet up with whoever the plan dictated. Then we would find the place where the plan said we were to stop and hide/wait until we could contact the other teams. From there, we would either stay on our own or meet up with the larger groups. It all depended on which plan we were deploying.

I should probably figure out the plan.

I heard Marein babbling excuses and apologies, but I knew it was only a temporary setback. Soon enough I heard Adams' heavy steps pounding after me. I was faster, though, and as I was going up the stairs, a whole bunch of others were coming down, and some of those others were cat-boys with claws out and fangs bared. They could hold the danger off until the rest of us got to safety.

Tony was one of the last down the stairs, and I grabbed his shoulder. "Which plan?" I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew already.

"Plan A," he snarled around feline fangs, and then he shook me off and went off after his pride.

_Plan A. Team One: Con, Spark, Sy, Total. Con and Spark fly to Location R, Sy takes Total and runs to same. Wait for contact and update of situation, whatever it may be._

All the early-letter Plans were built around "In Case Someone Tries To Kidnap So-And-So." And because I am the current Supreme King of Getting Kidnapped, Plan A was "In Case Someone Tries To Kidnap Spark," and was thus set up to protect me. A few of the others had similar plans (Angel, Max, Con, and Sy all come to mind as the high-profilers), but after them the alphabet was assigned to separate events that would affect the whole household. Examples include "In Case The House Explodes," "In Case The Neighbors Realize We're Mutant Freaks In Hiding," and "In Case Of A Zombie Apocalypse."

And so on.

It was all simple enough, but the one thing that concerned me - besides the not-FBI dude chasing me - was that Sy was Dylan right now, and Dylan probably didn't know about our Plans. I could only hope that in the pre-Plan phase of when I'd been talking to the not-FBI guy, someone had found and told him what'd be going down.

And there was Marein, too. She may be a vile sort of woman, but she did try to help me today. I hoped she had the wits enough to escape.

I dashed past Con's room, where he was already at the window. Seeing me rush past, he called back, "Hurry up!"

I didn't allow myself time to respond, sarcastically or otherwise. I flew up to the third floor and threw myself into my room, where I dragged my backpack out from under my bed before popping the window and jumping out. No time for subtlety, or checking for possible witnesses today. All that mattered was speed.

As I flapped my wings to stay aloft, I could see some of the others fleeing through the backyard, crawling out of windows and zipping through the back doors, following their own routes to meet up with their own teams in their own locations. Con whistled above me and I looked up to see him circling the house. He jerked his head north-east and tilted his wings, flying in the same direction.

I followed.

We flew quickly, not speaking, heading only for Location R: Wispy Sunny Pines, an abandoned mental institution somewhere downtown. Max, Fang, Con, and Blaze had all gone on an expedition during our first days in town, searching for backup places to run to, if we so needed. I'd secretly hoped we'd never need to run again, but hey. What're ya gonna do.

I knew the way to WSP by heart, so as I flew, I let my mind wander. I wondered how this whole thing had happened.

I was pretty sure the wanting me for killing Leander was legit, but since Leander had been an experiment, then it was more likely that those suits were part of the remnants of Itex. And since the remnants of Itex had assimilated to that other company, 4Kids or whatever, then the leader of _that_ company was probably the one behind this.

I tried to skim over the memories of Australia without lingering too much on the nightmare-inducing experiences. What had Leander said? The new guy in charge of the company that had taken over Itex. . .his name was Stevens, the same surname Adams had given Leander. It'd make sense for him to be responsible for all this. But why now? Sure, Leander had been "special" enough that he'd be missed, but it'd been over a month since his death. Why was Stevens only acting now?

_Maybe he'd just found out,_ I thought, then nodded to myself. That could be it. After all, that house was in the middle of nowhere. Nobody but us and Leander had been there. Maybe he'd been allowed a certain amount of time to play before reporting back to the boss. Yeah. . .and once that time had run out, and there'd been no word, they'd sent someone to check the place out. Leander's body was discovered, conclusions had been deduced, and now revenge was being carried out.

I sighed and tilted my wings, following Con as he began to dive toward a decrepit-looking building down at the end of a lone street in the city.

I wished more of my enemies had ended up like Con. Resigned to a life where I cannot be tamed, and extracting revenge in small, relatively harmless doses.

Can't always get what we want, though, can we?

* * *

*the soursop (annona muricata) is a broadleaf, flowering, evergreen tree native to central america, the caribbean and northern south america, colombia and brazil, mexico, peru, venezuela, and some sub-saharan african countries that lie within the tropics. its flavor has been described as a combination of strawberry and pineapple with sour citrus flavor notes contrasting with an underlying creamy flavor reminiscent of coconut or banana. (wikipedia, my one true love. i thank you.)

**such subtle little references i make to other works.

I DON'T KNOW WHY THE CAPS LOCK IS ON.


	13. Chapter 13

we've caught up.

i'll start dancing now.

. . .

okay, not really.

i don't dance.

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride.

* * *

_**13. lull***_

Con and I circled Wispy Sunny Pines twice, only lingering long enough for Dylan, with Total in his arms, to catch up and head inside. Once they made it in, the two of us zipped around back and climbed in through the broken window of an ex-patient's room. The place was dark and absolutely filthy, scattered with broken furniture and coated in dust and grime.

Our refuge, people. Livin' large.

I kicked at a visibly moldy pillow on the floor. "Nice place," I commented to Con, who had made a beeline for a rotted old dresser. "Picked it for the creature comforts, I see."

"Well, there's that," Con said absently. He grabbed the handles of one of the dresser's drawers, and with a loud, sticky _crack!_, he yanked it out and tossed it aside. Reaching into the broken furniture, Con produced a semi-automatic handgun and a rubber-banded chunk of extra clips. He held them both up for me to see. "Plus, this was a great place to hide this."

I blinked in surprise, then checked myself. Of _course_ Con would have a gun. Unlike Max, he actually approved of deadly weaponry. Especially if he was in possession of it.

"Where'd you get that?" I asked.

"Around." He shoved the extra clips in his pocket and the gun itself in his belt. "Let's find Dylan."

I followed him out of the room and downstairs, picking my way over scattered debris. Halfway down I almost fell straight through the floor because it'd rotted away so bad. The place must have been out of commission for a really long time to have fallen into such disrepair. I guessed. . .exactly twenty years? Give or take twenty minutes?

We found Dylan waiting at the bottom of the stairs, in what used to be the lobby. Sy's backpack was slung on his back and Total was still in his arms - I assumed the Scottie was too grossed out to be set down. I would be too.

"All right, so we ran," he said once we met him. "Now what?"

"We get out of here, for one thing," Con said, nodding to the lobby. "Too open. Let's find a room."

"You should have said that before," I muttered irritably, turning back around. "Making me climb up and down stairs. . ."

"Get over it."

Dylan came up by my left and I instinctively moved right. But the aversion wasn't necessary - all he was doing was handing off Total. I took the dog in my arms and scratched his head, grateful for the familiarity of fur and warmth.

"If we're finding a room, can it at least be a non-disgusting one?" Total asked. I smirked.

"Doubt it'll happen, Totally," I told him. We arrived at the top of the steps and I swept my free arm out, gesturing to the forsaken hallway, all dark and dusty and littered with broken light fixtures. "This entire place is a complete sty."

He snorted and huddled into my grip. "Juuuust great."

We wound up in what must have been an old therapy office or something, because there was a desk and a couch in there, along with some chairs and a bunch of pillows, too. I kicked at the couch's cushion and a cloud of dust poofed up. Total and I said "Ew" at the same time.

Con shut the door behind us and made his way to the big desk. He shrugged off his pack and set it down, rummaging into it and eventually producing a cell phone. Nothing special, just a burner that'd he'd probably ditch before the day was out. He started making calls, leaving Dylan, Total and I to our own devices.

I found a chair that wasn't completely decrepit and wiped the dust off it before sitting down. Total circled once and lay down in my lap, heaving a sigh.

"I'm getting too old for this," he grumbled.

"I hear ya," I agreed. So far I'd managed to keep my thoughts on a semi-straight track: run, get here, don't get lost. But now that we'd stopped moving. . .I twined my fingers in Total's fur, praying that they wouldn't start to shake. Who knew a month was all it took to get used to not running for your life all the time?

"So what exactly is going on?" I gave a start as Dylan came up beside me, ruby red eyes questioning. "Since nobody's bothered telling me anything except to run to some abandoned and probably haunted mental institution."

"Some guys came to the house," I explained shortly. "They wanted to arrest me, so we ran."

He blinked. "All of us?"

"That's usually how this works," I said slowly. "If they want one of us, the rest are probably involved anyway. So we set up a bunch of plans in case anybody tried to come after us."

"So this plan is. . .?" he prompted.

"Plan A," I said, fondling Total's ears. "In Case Someone Tries To Kidnap Spark."

Dylan smirked. "You must be popular, to be letter A."

"You would know, jackass."

"Okay." We both stopped and looked to Con, who was done making calls. Flipping the phone in his hand, he said, "I've had contact with both Max and Blaze, but so far Joey and Frankie aren't answering. Nothing to worry about, though, since they can't fly and are probably still trying to get to their locations." He leaned back against the desk and set the phone down, letting out a teeny sigh. "Max sent Swift back to check the house, and it's crawling with police now. We can't go back."

"Juuuust great," I said, echoing Total.

"So what do we do now?" Dylan asked, sitting on the arm of the dusty couch. "Wait here 'til it's safe?"

"Theoretically," Total replied. "However, I vote to relocate to someplace cleaner."

"Seconded," I said. Con rolled his eyes.

"This was only supposed to be a temporary stop anyway," he said impatiently. "Since city police are involved with this, we _have_ to leave. They know the city as well as we do, and they'll find us sooner or later."

"Ballin'," I said, grabbing Total and standing up. "Let's go."

"Not _yet,_" Con snapped. I stuck out my tongue at him and set Total back down on the chair. "We need to think about where the others will go."

I threw my hands in the air. "Great! So let's just wait until the cats actually get to their locations and call us!" I suggested. "Or, we can wait and have the police find us! I don't want to wait around, okay, because I'd rather not have to be captured and detained again!"

I was practically yelling by the end; my patience was beginning to wear thin. Er. First there's all the other crap messing with our lives, and now the freaking police and FBI (maybe) are after me, and now I'm being told I have to wait around in some abandoned old mental institution, surrounded by dust, grime, and idiots. Plus, I'd had to wake up early today. I was ready to crack.

Con, unfazed by my yelling, rolled his eyes and said dully, "Calm down, Spark."

Aaaand that was it.

I broke.

"Oh, sure, okay," I said scathingly. With a gesture at Dylan, I began to rant. "First, I have to deal with _this-_"

"Hey," Dylan protested. I ignored him.

"Then I have to sit through Dr. Frigid Bitch's long-winded disapproval speeches that tell me absolutely _nothing,_ then we have to steal a freaking medical truck that ended up not helping at all whatsoever, and now I've got possible feds after me for a murder I totally had a right to commit!"

"Quit pacing," Con told me. I glanced down and saw I'd cut a clean rut through the dust on the carpet. "It's annoying."

"Well, sor-_ry,_" I snapped. I stalked over to the couch and sat down, shuddering belatedly when I remembered the grime. But I crossed my arms over my chest and powered through it.

"You know I bet those weren't actually feds," Dylan remarked to Con. "They probably belonged to whoever was in charge of Leander in the first place."

"I thought that too," Con admitted.

"They flashed a badge," I told them. "But it was either really real or a good fake."

Con shrugged. "Not much we can do about it now."

"Yeah." Dylan was quiet for a while, then asked, "So, what now?"

"We wait," Total said. He sat up on his chair and scratched at his ear. "Hopefully not for too long. I'm getting fleas just by sitting here."

"Right. We wait," I said acidly. "Because apparently that's our only option."

Con acted like I hadn't said anything. He checked his phone. "Until we hear from Joe and Frankie, we stay put. Judging by the distance they had to cover, it should take a little more time."

"Anything on Marein?" I asked.

"No one said. Why?"

I shifted uncomfortably - part from the topic, part because I could actually _feel_ the dirt and disease from the couch seeping through my shirt. "Well, she _did_ try to help me, at the end," I said quietly. "Plus, she's the only one who can help us with this thing." I gestured to Dylan again, who scowled.

"Oh, so now I'm a thing," he sneered. "Thanks."

"We knew this could happen," Con told me. "Hence the plans. Just calm down, okay?"

"I _can't,_" I said desperately, standing up. "Why don't you understand that?"

"Because he just doesn't know you as well as I do," Dylan said airily. I snatched up an old pillow from the couch and threw it at him as hard as I could, smacking him in the face and unleashing a cloud of dust. Con snickered.

"You don't know me!" I shouted at him.

Con laughed again, and even Total chuckled. I grabbed another pillow and hurled it at Con, too, snapping, "Shut up!"

Con dodged, and the pillow flew past him to the wall. I think the dust that poofed out of it formed the shape of a skull. I turned for a second, glancing around for a new weapon to fire, and then something bounced off my back. I froze, then slowly turned back around. On the floor was the pillow I'd thrown at Con; he'd thrown it back.

I looked up at him, eyes narrowed. "Oh, you wanna do this?" I asked, my tone a threat.

He smirked, his stormcloud eyes glinting. "Bring it," he challenged.

"Here we go," Dylan said, sounding bored.

I kicked the pillow into my hands and whipped it across the room.

Now, pillow fights are usually harmless and fun, but that's not really the case amongst bird-kids. When we throw pillows, we really chuck those bastards. And considering that these ancient cushions were probably harboring twenty years of dead skin cells, asbestos, and anthrax, we were probably messing with death for about the bazillionth time in our lives, too.

I'm not sure he meant to, but Con really helped me by starting the pillow fight. Because even though I missed half the time, it felt good to just take out all the frustration of the past couple days. It was better than punching walls or kicking defenseless furniture, that's for sure.

I tossed another pillow and it whipped past the top of Total's chair. Total, fearing for his safety, jumped down and retreated to behind Dylan's legs, well out of the line of fire.

Kinda.

Con returned fire with a small, square pillow whose cover fabric had probably been made from some sort of lizard's skin, and I just barely dodged it. I lunged for another pillow, not paying attention to the first one's landing until Dylan let out a sharp cry.

"Ow!"

"Wuss," I said absently, and I hurled another pillow Con's way. He ducked behind the desk and I just barely skimmed his head.

"What the. . .what is going on?"

I faltered mid-throw, and even Con poked his head up from behind his shield. We looked at each other for a second, but then we looked at Dylan. Something about his voice had sounded off. Upon inspection he looked supremely befuddled, watching us in confusion and holding the pillow that had hit him in, presumably, the face.

No. . .not _Dylan._

My pillow dropped from my hand as I registered the color of his eyes.

"Huh," Con said, folding his arms on the top of the desk. "Look who it is."

He looked from me to Con and back again, a puzzled look clouding his blue irises.

Not red. _Blue._

"What?" Sy said.

I didn't even realize I'd moved until I hit him. _"Sy!"_

Thank God. _Thank God thank God thank God._ He was back, Sy was back, and Dylan was gone, finally gone. I may not usually be super-emotional or anything, but when your best friend/boyfriend goes inexplicably missing for five days, you get pretty happy when he comes back. I could feel all the tension just evaporating as I hugged him, glad that it was just _Sy,_ my Sy, my wonderfully blue-eyed Fish Boy.

"Ack-!" Sy choked a little as I tackled him in a hug; I had to let go quickly as he unbalanced and bumped down from the couch's arm to the cushion. He coughed once through the cloud of disturbed dust. "I-it's nice to see you too, Spark," he said with a smile. Then he looked around the room and the confusion returned. "But, uh. . .what's going on right now?"

"So you don't remember?" Con asked, standing up. There was a rectangle of brownish gray on his dark shirt, evidence of where I'd managed to get him with a pillow.

Sy's eyebrow raised. "Remember what?"

"Dylan took over," I said softly, and he visibly stiffened. "We had no idea why, and apparently he didn't either. Don't you remember?"

"I. . ." Sy took a breath, closing his eyes as he tried to recall. "I remember being in the store, but after that. . ." He opened his eyes (yay, still blue!) and shook his head. "I didn't feel him or anything. How long's it been?"

"Five days," I told him, and he flinched.

"Oh, get over it," Con said, rolling his eyes. Sy glared at him, but Con ignored it. "What's it matter? Dylan came to play, we couldn't figure out why, we called your mom, _she_ couldn't figure out why, and now we're here because the feds are after Spark. Just business as usual. No reason to get so worked up about it."

_Guess the kindness only lasts so long, huh?_ I thought, rubbing my temple. Con had been. . .well, not exactly _nice,_ but more understanding and take-charge than I thought he'd be about the whole situation. But I guess now that Sy was back, all bets were off.

"Must you?" I asked him tiredly.

"Must I what?"

"Be such a goddamn little bastard," I clarified.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Con sniffed, crossing his arms in a rather haughty way. "In no aspect am I little."

I felt my face twist as I tried not to smile. No, it was too easy. . .but ahh, I couldn't resist.

"That's not what Slutty McShortSkirt said," I taunted.

"What?" Con exclaimed, and Sy laughed. I turned and beamed at him - Dylan hadn't laughed, so I hadn't heard it in five days, at least. Which now seemed like forever ago.

"Not that I don't appreciate you putting Con down," he said, still grinning, "but can I get a real explanation, please?"

"I think Sparky can handle that," said Total. I glanced at him and his eye twitched in a wink. He then trotted over to Con and bumped his nose at his ankles. "Let's give them a minute."

I grinned, unable to hide it. Have I mentioned lately how much I love Total?

"What?" Con looked down, confused. "Why?"

"Because I'm the adult here and I said so," Total replied patiently. Then he leaped straight up, leaving Con to fumble to catch him. "Now let's go scope the premises or something. Make sure the coppers aren't on our tail."

Con grumbled something about dog years not counting for maturity, but he grabbed up his cell phone and left anyway.

I waited until the door swung shut, then reached out for Sy's wrist and dragged him to his feet. He stumbled into me and I grabbed a fistful of his shirt, pulling him close and into a kiss.

He seemed surprised, but kissed back. When I pulled away, he looked at me gladly, eyes glinting, lips quirked into a little smile.

"Hi," he said, and I felt my face heat up a bit. I know I usually skim over it, and don't go into detail about my romantic escapades, but hey. Five days. There'd been that unspoken, nagging thought that Sy might not've come back at all.

"I missed you," I said quietly. I let go of his shirt, smoothing the wrinkles. He only had about two long-sleeved shirts, so Dylan had worn one of the short-sleevers today. The wear on it was obvious - I poked my finger through a hole at his collar.

"Was it really that long?" he murmured, leaning back against the arm of the couch. I half turned and leaned with him, resting my head on his shoulder and watching as he trailed his fingers up and down my black scars. For some reason he was always so keen on tracing them. Tingles raced over my arms.

"Well, after five straight weeks of you. . .yeah," I admitted. I sighed. "I guess I was just used to seeing you every day."

He was quiet for a moment, but then asked, "So what exactly happened?"

"It's like Con said," I said. Without looking up, I took his hand and held mine against it, beginning to play with his fingers. "Dylan just randomly came out while you guys were at the store, and we couldn't figure out why it happened. We found your mom because we thought she could help, but she couldn't figure anything out either. We had to run today because some FBI guys came to the house and tried to arrest me for shooting Leander. Thing is, they probably weren't actually FBI."

It's a mark of mutant character that none of this overly surprised Sy. He just nodded, accepting the information. "Sent by Itex?" he guessed.

"4Kids, as it were," I corrected. "Changed the name, remember?"

He nodded again thoughtfully, then grabbed my hand and squeezed. I looked up and saw his expression had changed to one of amused disbelief. "You called my _mom?_"

"Actually, I did." We both started and looked to the door; Con had returned, still holding a rather grumpy-looking Total in his arms. "I thought if anybody, she'd be able to help us out most." He strode in, dropping the dog to the floor. Total yipped and flared his little wings, slowing the descent and coasting across the floor to land at my feet.

Folding his wings, Total nosed up under my pant leg and gave my ankle a lick. "I tried for longer, but he wouldn't have it," he muttered.

I smiled and nudged him with my foot. "Thanks anyway, Totally."

"Finally heard from the cats," Con said. "They've made it to their places, and everyone's all right. Still no word on Marein," he added to me.

I shrugged. "Ah well."

"You don't seem overly concerned about my mother's well-being," Sy commented with a grin.

"I'm semi-concerned," I said in a measured tone. "I mean, I don't want her _dead_ or anything, but overall I don't particularly care where she ends up."

"Well, whether or not we care about her, she doesn't matter," Con said. He crossed the room back over to the desk, cramming the cell phone into one of his pack's pockets. "We've got confirmation to move if we want. And according to Total, if we stay here any longer he'll turn us in himself."

"Ah?" I looked down at Total, where he was still lingering by my feet. "How quickly you betray me, o loyal companion."

"At least jail is _clean,_" he protested. Then he paused. "Usually."

"You can't turn us in," I argued playfully. "Do you _see_ how adorable we are? We'd be jail bait. And you don't want us to have to suffer through _that,_ do you?"

Total made a show of considering, taking his time in mumbling to himself and tilting his head from side to side, as if weighing the consequences. I laughed and he winked up at me, unfolding a wing to brush at my leg.

"I may be picky, but I'm no snitch," he reassured me. "We'll keep ya safe, Sparky. Count on it."

* * *

*i literally could not think of a better title for this. but since there's a sort of lull in the action right now. . .eh. whatever.

yay, sy's back. and lo! behold my pathetic attempt at the closeness he and spark share as a couple. /romancefail

i should probably go work on chapter fourteen.

but, knowing me, i'll probably end up watching _young justice_ or _teen titans__._ because Robin.

haha, could you imagine Spark being Batman's sidekick? she'd be the best/worst Robin ever. best because she could totally kick ass if she wanted to, but worst because she'd probably be too distracted bantering with villains to get anything done.

. . .it's times like this that i wish i could draw. i want Spark to be Robin now.

but whatevs.

TO THE SPARK-CAVE!


	14. Chapter 14

woulda done this earlier, but i literally had no time last monday because i actually went out in the world to do stuff. and then tumblr swallowed the rest of the week. and then the korra finale destroyed the weekend.

. . .i'm not even sure why i have tumblr. i don't do anything with it. i just scroll about liking things.

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride.

* * *

_**14. finesse**_

_Beep-beep, bee-_ "This is Red."*

_"Black. You made your location?"_

"Yep."

_"Casualties?"_

"No."

_"Followed?"_

"No."

_"Good."_

Con hung up and Blaze stowed the phone without complaint. Phones could be tapped, conversations listened in on. It was best to keep things short and sweet. With emphasis on the short. Sweet kinda just fell to the wayside.

She scanned her group's runaway location, a large thrift store in the northern outskirts of town. People of all looks and ages were always drifting in and out of the place, meandering through the aisles of recycled clothing and bric-a-brac, so it was pretty easy to walk in and blend. And, because it was a _thrift_ store, anybody in a suit would be seen from a mile away.

"You all right?" Iggy asked mildly, and her eyes fixed on him. He was so light, like Sy, but more of a feathery fair instead of porcelain white. They were sitting together in the back corner of the store, in a makeshift coffee shop sort of place, while the Gasman, Avi, DJ, and Janey browsed through the nearby book section. Iggy's hands, long and slender, were on the table, entwined in two locked metal rings. It was some sort of brain teaser the Gasman had found on a random shelf and given him to figure out.

Rather than giving a direct answer to his question, Blaze frowned. "Why?" she asked, slightly accusing.

"You sighed the Con sigh," he said.

"Did not."

"Did so." The argument was reflexive, not hostile. It wasn't even an argument, really; they didn't fight that much at all. It was just a knee-jerk response of undermining whatever the other one said. Petty entertainment. "What'd he say?"

This time Blaze was conscious of her sigh. "Nothing. But that's just Con, he never says anything," she said, her voice taking on the tone of a much-practiced rant. "On missions, I got it. At home, I got it. But ever since we hooked up with you guys, I thought he'd. . .I dunno, unwind a little. Not be such an uptight little bastard."

"Leopards don't change their spots," Iggy said. His lips twitched in a half smile. "Or at least, so I'm told."

She cracked a smirk - no matter how stupid his lines were, sometimes they really did make her smile - but tried to not let it show in her voice when she said, "This isn't the time for blind jokes."

"It is _always_ time for blind jokes," he corrected. The metal rings in his hands clinked and came apart; he'd solved the puzzle. "And I heard that smile."

"You can't _hear_ a smile," Blaze said condescendingly.

"Blind people can. We hear the rays of light that reflect off your teeth."

"You can't _hear_ light rays!"

"Blind people can."

"Ugh!" she groaned in frustration. "Why I _ever_ decided to be with you is a mystery."

Iggy just laughed.

* * *

_Beep-beep, beep. Beep-beep-_ "Con?"

_"Duh. You made your location?"_

"Yeah, we-"

_"Any casualties?"_

"What? No, but-"

_"Were you followed?"_

"No."

_"Then good."_

And then he hung up.

For as much as Max respected Con for being a leader who was all business, sometimes, she thought, he was just a downright jerk.

She was so annoyed that she blatantly ignored Con's previous warnings to never initiate calls. Plan A basically dictated that he was the grand master of operations, so he was the one who decided if and when it was safe to make a call. Instead of sticking to that part of the plan, she just dialed the number and tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for him to pick up.

_"Nothing could have _possibly_ happened in the two seconds since I just called,"_ Con snapped as he answered the phone. Max scowled.

"That's not why I'm calling," she retorted. "We got away all right, but I had Swift run back for a check on the house. There are police cars all over it, there's no way we can go back there."

_"That isn't vital information,"_ Con said impatiently. _"I guessed that would happen anyway."_

Max's hand tightened on the phone. "You could at least thank me for being considerate enough to tell you."

_"But I'm not going to. I have better things to do."_

And then he hung up again. Irritated but resigned to the fact that she wouldn't get any more out of him, Max shoved the phone into her pocket and crossed her arms over her chest, glaring out the unfinished window of the unfinished building that was her group's temporary hideout.

The city was spread out before her; their building was a tall office structure, almost ten stories up. While she wasn't happy about Spark's situation, Max had to admit to herself that it had almost been a relief to leave the house behind. Her group was all bird-kid, so it was almost like having her old flock back again. Just six kids with wings on the run from the law.

_"Stop reading my mind!"_ Shadow yelled.

Max sighed. Shadow and the others were camped out on rolls of carpeting in the center of the room, left on the unfinished floors by the construction workers. Although he had been focused enough to follow Max to their hideout point, Max felt Shadow was going to be a source of major trouble during down time. It'd been bad enough at the house, where even Con could barely control the kid; without his usual leader, things were bound to get dicey. Especially around Angel, who, it seemed, Shadow had declared to be his eternal mortal enemy.

"I don't _mean_ to, I just hear it!" Angel retorted irritably.

"It's not like she can turn it off," Nudge added, trying to be helpful.

"Just stop it, okay? I can feel you in there and I hate it!"

Max rubbed her temples, trying to block out the bickering. Okay, so it wasn't _exactly_ like her old flock. In order to split young ones and old ones evenly between the groups, Iggy had volunteered to be in Blaze's. Gazzy had elected to go with him, leaving Swift and Shadow to take their places with Max, Fang, Nudge, and Angel.

Some people were unhappier than others about the arrangement.

"You okay?"

Max turned to find Fang standing at her side. Just at a glance she could tell the younger ones' arguing was getting on his nerves, too; there was a tightness around his mouth that spoke of annoyance.

"Yeah," she said tiredly. "Just never thought I'd miss Iggy and Gazzy blowing stuff up for no reason."

Fang tried to respond but was cut off by Shadow yelling again.

_"Stoppit or I'll take your memories!"_ the boy shouted, and the resounding _thunk_ told Max that he'd either hit something or stomped on the floor.

Max whipped around to order him to be quiet and calm down, but Swift beat her to the punch. He grabbed the back of Shadow's shirt and yanked, forcing Shadow to sit on the floor. Shadow tried to protest and get up, but was silenced by a sharp smack to the back of the head.

"Stop it now!" Swift snapped. "Things are bad enough without you making it worse."

"I hate this group," Shadow whined. "Why can't we be with Con?"

"Because that's not the plan," Swift replied. "Suck it up."

Shadow scowled and rubbed the back of his head, where Swift had hit him. "Jerk."

An uneasy sort of silence fell over the room then, and Max turned back to the window, closing her eyes and letting out a sigh. Yeah, this combination of Shadow with. . .well, _part_ of her old flock was definitely going to be trouble.

Fang nudged her and she looked at him. He nodded back to the kids and muttered, "Not that I don't appreciate the quiet, but we're going to have to do something about Shadow."

She nodded. "I'll talk to Con about it when I get the chance," she said. Then she rolled her eyes and added, "If he doesn't hang up on me."

"Can't exactly blame him for ignoring you," Fang said reasonably. "He's back in his element. All business, no fun."

"Because _our_ missions were always full of sunshine and daisies," Max said with a sarcastic smirk.

"There was that one time where Nudge found those flowers in that cave."

Max snickered. "Oh, yeah. We were living large."

Fang's mouth quirked in an almost-smile. But then it was gone. "You were happier then," he said quietly.

Max stared at him. "What are you talking about?"

Fang shrugged. "This whole house thing was great, but. . .you never really settled in, did you?" Max tried to respond but Fang held up a hand to stop her. "I know you didn't. You treated it like another rest stop. Now that we're on the run again. . .you're feeling more at home."

"I. . ." She flailed for an explanation, but who was she kidding? She heaved a sigh. "Fine. Yes, the house was great. But. . .it just didn't feel like _home._"

"More like a boarding school," Fang agreed.

"And in the middle of the suburbs?" Max shook her head. "No, thanks, I like my mountains."

"Maybe we can have that next," he suggested. He nodded to the city outside the window. "Now that this place's cover is blown and all."

"Yeah. Just you, me, and the flock," Max said, smiling at the thought. Then she heard Shadow and Swift exchanging sharp whispers, having a soft argument, and she frowned. "Well, the _real_ flock."

There was a miniscule narrowing of Fang's eyes. "And Spark?"

"Yeah." Still thinking about her flock in the mountains, she didn't quite understand that there was a question. Then it clicked and she blinked. "Wait, what about Spark?"

"Is she a part of that?" Fang asked. "The house thing? Because with her we'll get stuck with Sy and probably Con, too."

She opened her mouth to reply but was saved from having to come up with an explanation by her cell phone. It beeped again, signaling a call; in a second she had it to her ear. "Hello?"

_"Why do say that like it's a question?"_ Con asked, sounding irritated._ "You know it's me."_

A frown tugged at Max's mouth. "Sorry," she said. "Allow me to apologize for my common courtesy."

_"Apology not accepted,"_ Con retorted, and Max could swear she could hear the arrogant smirk. _"And before you start bitching about how much of a jerk I am, just know that Sy's back."_

It took a second for the words to process. ". . .Wait," Max said at length. Fang gave her a quizzical look but she waved him off. "What? He's just. . .back?"

_"Yeah,"_ Con said shortly. _"No idea why. He just got hit in the face with a pillow and snapped back."_

"How did he get hit with a pillow?" she asked, bewildered.

_"I threw it at him,"_ Con said, explaining as if Max were stupid. She scowled.

"Really?" she sneered. "No kiddin'."

Con sighed irritably. _"Look, I just thought you'd get pissed if I didn't tell you right away, so I told you to save myself the trouble. That's it. Goodbye."_

And then he hung up. Again.

Frustrated, Max stuffed the phone back in her pocket. _Con._ God, he was starting to get as annoying as Spark.

* * *

"So." I sat back in the grossest, dustiest couch in existence and cradled Total in one arm. With the other hand I stroked him like a supervillain, slowly from ears to tail, and looked to Con. "What now?"

(It took a certain amount of self-control to not add on a "Mr. Powers" to the end of that. Seriously, I felt like Dr. Evil with Mr. Bigglesworth.)

"It's best if we leave town," Con said. There wasn't even hesitation to it. "Head out of state and out of jurisdiction."

I glanced up at where Sy was leaning on the arm of the couch; he shrugged a shoulder. Con, meanwhile, dug through his pack until he found a map, presumably of the southwest United States. "Okay, but where to?" I asked as Con opened the map.

"Knowing Max, she'll want to go to her mother's house," Con said, not looking up from behind the folds of California. "We tracked her chip data back when we were on you, and those were the only coordinates that popped up more than twice for any significant amount of time."

"But we can't go there," I said, straightening up. "If you found it, then other people can too."

"No shit. But since Max will want to go there anyway, we may as well head in that general direction," Con explained. "And since the other two groups don't have fliers**, they'll hang back in-state, or maybe hit the border. They'll be looking for safe spots too, so I suggest we hang out somewhere between everyone."

"A ring of fire," Sy said in a neutral tone. "You want to use the rest of them as a meat shield so you can know which ways _not_ to go."

"Is that so wrong?" Con asked, not sounding as if he cared in the slightest.

Sy studied him, a look of general dislike clouding his face. But then he let out a small breath and shook his head. "It's classic you."

Con replied absently, "And we all know I'm very classy."

"That's not quite a valid response, Connie boy," Total said. Con ignored him. Like he usually did.

_Ring of fire._ I frowned, my methodic stroking of Total slowing to a halt. The way Sy had said it. . .it sounded as if the people after me would take out anything and everything in order to get to me.

Cuh-_rap._ I bit my lip and stared off into the corner of the room. Con was right - Max would run to her mom, even if only for half a day. That would mean Arizona, which was a little too close to Colorado for my liking. And. . .okay, I know that before, when given the choice, I'd sorta put off going home and seeing my family, but now. . ._crap._ Whoever was after me wanted revenge for Leander, and since _he'd_ known about my family, chances were that they'd know, too. Things could get messy.

"Spark?" Sy's touch jolted me out of my train of thought and I looked at him. He appeared more than a little concerned.

"What?" I said. Wait, maybe he'd asked a question. Or maybe he hadn't. Um. . .let's bank on it. "Yeah. Sure."

Sy's brow wrinkled. Total coughed and twisted his head to whisper up at me: "He didn't ask you a question, Sparky."

_Damn._ ". . .Riiigght." For a second I couldn't help but smirk to myself. I may or may not have said that in a very Evil-ish manner.

"Are you okay?" Sy asked slowly.

"Yeah, just. . .kinda worried," I admitted.

"About?" Total prompted.

I hesitated for a second, but ultimately decided that denying the truth would get me nowhere. "Well. . .my family."

There was a crinkling of paper and I looked over to the desk, where Con had finally surfaced from behind his map. "Come again?"

I quickly explained my earlier thought process. Ring of fire, Arizona, family, general messiness. (I left out the Dr. Evil part.) As I talked, Total cuddled into my abdomen for comfort, and the boys just watched me with differing levels of concern/is-she-all-right-in-the-head.

The second one was more Con's look than Sy's.

Once finished, Sy tried to say something, but he was quickly cut off.

"Do you-"

"Don't even _think_ we're going to see them," Con snapped. "It'll for sure put a target on their backs."

"But if we don't go, we can't warn them," I protested. "I want them at least to be ready for. . .well, anything."

"Then here." Looking ticked, Con chucked me his burner phone. I flinched, not having hands to catch it, but Sy's hand darted out to save me. "Call them. Tell them to run."

I shook my head. "No. You don't get it."

"What don't I get?" Con demanded.

"I can't just _call_ them," I said exasperatedly. "They'll get too freaked that I'm actually contacting them. It'd be best to. . .to actually go there in person, suffer through the fussing, and then tell them _in person_ what's going down."

"No," Con refused. "Not allowed."

I bristled, my eye twitching. When will people learn that telling me is a bad move? Now I just wanted to go home to spite Con. "Order me again," I dared, my voice tight. "See what happens."

"Nobody is ordering and nobody is going anywhere by themselves," Sy said harshly. Con rolled his eyes and I leaned back in my seat, resuming my Dr. Evil stroking of Total. "We can hide out in a crackhouse in Vegas for all I care, but we're sticking together. Whether we like it or not."

"I agree," Total said. "Except for the whole crackhouse part. If we hit Vegas, it's high-rolling or nothing."

"Seconded," I snickered. I looked down at Total and ruffled his ears. "You know, I didn't even like little dogs 'til I met you. You're definitely changing my opinion of them."

The dog's eye twitched in a wink. "We're not all like this. I happen to be an exceptional individual."

I nodded. "Noted."

Then something weird happened. Sy glanced over at Con, who frowned and stared back. They exchanged this weird sort of look, like the kind Max and Fang had when they both knew what the other was thinking.

Somehow I suspected it concerned me.

Which, coincidentally, was how a lot of the Max/Fang looks went, too.

Finally, Con rolled his eyes and went back to his map. "Fine. Whatever," he growled. "We'll go to her stupid house, I don't even care."

Sy looked at me and half-smiled. "I think that's as good as you're going to get."

"So it's decided?" Total said, sitting up and giving himself a shake.

"Yep." I took a deep breath and lifted my hands so he could jump to the floor. "Back to Mo-town."

"That's east, mostly, right?" Sy asked.

"Northeast," Con said shortly. Definitely not happy. But ah, who cared, he was never happy.

Sy pushed off from the couch and joined Con at the desk, probably to look at the map and plan a route. Total went to join them, and I stayed in my seat.

As their conversation ambled on into boring figurations of what highways to follow and which evasive maneuvers to take, I leaned forward and grabbed my backpack from where I'd dropped it on the floor. Unzipping it, I reached in and started piling its contents on my lap: a handful of small, imperishable foodstuffs, five rolled-up shirts, a little first-aid kit, and a spare pair of jeans.

That was it. Pack light, no unnecessary items. That'd been the requirement, and that was how every backpack had been packed.

'Cept for mine.

Planting one hand on the tower of items to steady it, I used the other hand to feel around the inside of my now empty bag. As I groped for the start of a zipper, Total meandered his way back to me and watched me curiously.

"Is there a reason you're _un_-packing?" he asked.

I ignored him as I caught the zipper and pulled. When we'd been preparing for situations such as these back when we'd first moved in, we'd decided as a group to pack all the bags in a uniform sort of way. But I'd had a secret weapon, and as such I'd had to keep it, well, secret. And so I'd gone out and gotten a stretch of fabric and a zipper and sewn in another compartment to the bottom of my backpack.

Zipper unzipped, I flipped back the flap of the false bottom and reached down to the real bottom, where my hand touched cold metal and dry leather. I wrapped my thumb and two fingers around the thing and used the other two fingers to pinch a plastic baggie. I pulled my secret weapon out of my backpack and rested it on my lap, on top of the tower of my pack's contents.

Total gave a low whistle, which made Con and Sy look up from their map. I pretended to ignore the way they glanced at each other uneasily, instead calmly setting the gun aside as I quickly re-packed my bag. Once done, I picked the gun back up and began to examine it, checking for wear and tear.

"Spark?" Sy finally ventured. "Is that Leander's gun?"

Total let out a little "Oh" of recognition, but I tried to be nonchalant in my answer. "Yep."

It was almost easy to handle the weapon that taken its owner's life. It looked so normal and clean. An old-style six-shooter pistol with a pearl handle. The holster, on the other hand, was different: once perfect white leather, it was now stained with the rusty red of old blood.

Leander's blood.

I'd scrubbed and soaked and sponged that thing for _hours_ and _hours,_ with any number of cleaning solutions, but it just refused to be white again. And I guess that was all right, in a way - I kind-of hate white now - but still. Bloody holsters just make for bad luck.

"Why would you take it?" Sy asked quietly. His voice was closer now and I took a peek out of the corner of my eye. He'd left the desk and was now kneeling at my side, acting like a cautious cop around a young witness.

I returned my eyes to the gun and shrugged as I knocked out the chamber. It clicked loudly. "Nothing deserves to be forgotten."

"_When_ did you take it?" Con sounded more curious than worried for my well-being.

"I picked it back up when I stood up," I said shortly, knowing they'd know. There'd been more than one night when the three of us had stayed up together for fear of nightmares. "And I grabbed the holster after I puked."

Con let out a breath. "Well, can you shoot it?" he asked briskly. He pulled his own gun and held it up. "Or do you wanna trade with me?"

"I'll be fine," I said shortly. I loaded the last of six bullets and snapped the chamber back into the gun. "Besides. We'll need it."

"Let's hope not," Total muttered.

"If they're coming after her because of Leander, then they won't be holding back," Con stated. "Realistically, we're gonna need it. So you better not freeze up on me if you have to fire that thing."

"You always speak with such finesse, Constantine," Total said airily. "It's one of the many things I admire about you."

"You be quiet, or I'll have you fixed," Con threatened, pointing at Total with his gun. The dog snorted and Con shoved the weapon back in his waistband. "How's _that_ for finesse?"

As their conversation dwindled off into back-and-forth quips, I holstered the gun and clipped it to my belt, where Sy's pale, thin fingers met mine. I looked to him but his eyes were on my hip.

I waited, and at length he said softly, "I don't like that you took that gun." He glanced up at me from beneath the fringe of silver hair and I felt a slight pang of guilt. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't think you'd get it," I confessed. Something flickered in his eyes, causing more guilt, and I sighed. "I just. . .even though it was the worst part of my life, I don't want to forget it. I can't let myself do that."

"But why keep a constant reminder of it?" he asked. I hesitated and he took my hand. "Spark. You can tell me."

_Can I really say this?_ I wondered about it for maybe a second, my fingers tightening on Sy's hand. There's a lot of stuff I'll say, even about myself - mostly all people have to do is ask. But I guess even I have my limit.

Whoa. Did that just happen? Did I just acknowledge that there are some things that I am unwilling to say? How. . .uncharacteristic. We should change that.

"Do you know how much it sucks for me to not remember things?" I said. I picked my words carefully and avoided looking at anything but the floor. Sy just held my hand and didn't say anything, instead waiting for me to speak at my own pace.

"They did tests on me when I was little. I'm supposed to be able to recall every single thing that has happened in my life. But after that last straw, when they were shipping me to New York, I ran away and just blocked out random parts of those first five years. When Shadow. . .did what he did, and messed with my head back in Salt Lake, it made me remember some things."

I had to stop there, and I noticed that the room was dead silent - Con and Total had quit calling each other names long enough to listen.

Awesome.

"And?" Sy prompted gently.

"_Some_ things, Sy," I emphasized. "Not all. And the fact that I know there are things that I can't remember because _I've_ blocked them out just drives me insane. It makes me hate my own mind."

"And you don't want anything similar to happen now," he said, realizing.

"Yeah. Leander's was bad. But everything before and after it has been amazing, and I don't want to forget a single second. I can't do that again."

Sy watched me for a few seconds, then sighed helplessly. "Fine. But I still don't like it."

"You don't have to." I stood up and slung my pack over my shoulder. Sy stood as well, and tightened his grip my hand with a reassuring squeeze. I gave him a small smile before peering around him at Con and Total, who were standing by rather awkwardly. "We ready to go?" I asked them.

Con blinked and busied himself with folding his map and packing it back in his bag. "Got no reason to stay," he said.

"Right. So let's fly away home***," Sy said.

Con scoffed and stepped out from behind the desk. "That movie was stupid."

"Do you have to have an opinion on everything?" Sy asked tiredly.

"Yes," Con retorted. "And since my opinion's right, I share it with the world. Deal with it."

"I'd rather deal a chair to your face," Sy said dryly.

"_That's_ nice, coming from a nancy boy," Con countered.

I felt Sy's hand clench and he snapped, "I swear to God-"

"Do you two _ever_ stop bickering?" I blurted, cutting off Sy's threat. They both looked away, annoyed. "Seriously, you're like an old married couple. Only violent. No, wait, that's still an old married couple."

"We are not," Sy objected, just as Con said, "Don't be ridiculous."

Total chuckled and I grinned. "I swear, one day I'm gonna take you both to see my grandparents," I told them. "A little time with them and you'll see the similarities, and you'll realize just how ridiculous _you_ both are. So let's just shut up and get going."

Neither of them responded, which made Total laugh again. "You boys need some succor after that particular decrial?"**** he asked, slightly mocking.

"Shut up," Con grumbled, and he strode for the door.

"Leave it to the dog to have a pretentious vocabulary," Sy said under his breath, and I snickered.

Having overheard, Total stuck his nose in the air and led the way after Con with a cocky trot. "My finesse knows no bounds," he declared.

"And may it never find any," I proclaimed.

"Amen."

* * *

*the anti-flock have color codenames, like the power rangers, or the main characters of the pokemon manga. Con is Black, Blaze is Red, Swift is Gray, Shadow is White, and Avi is Blue. Spark would have been Gold.

**did you know a flier is what they call a rectangular step in a straight flight of stairs? i didn't. until now.

***_god_ that movie's old. i don't even remember what it was about. just that it involves birds of some sort and maybe a girl and a plane.

****this is total's version of "would you like some ice for that burn?" i shall use it whenever the situation arises from now on.

most everything i write starts out as just an outline of conversations, and then i go in and add dialogue tags and action paragraphs and then just leave it. this time i think i actually tried for some scene description. well, sorta. in the beginning i did. but as time dragged on i kinda gave up 'cuz i didn't want to deprive you of new storyline.

also, since the beginning of this enterprise i've gotten better and more used to writing first-person. as you can tell from max's pov sequence, third-person has fallen to the wayside. oh how my writing skills grow and flourish, like that ratty old rose bush that haunts the corner of my house and just won't die and stabs me with its thorns when i try to mow the lawn.

. . .that metaphor _began_ well. . .sorta got away from me at the end there.


	15. Chapter 15

so i actually have a legit reason for not updating sooner: colorado spontaneously combusted. the waldo canyon fire was a little too close to my house for complete comfort, but it's pretty much contained now. was unnerving when it wasn't, though.

also, we had the floor in our living room redone with tile instead of carpet. i had to wake up early to let the guys in and stay downstairs all week while they worked :P all the banging and keeping the dog out of their way was very distracting and allowed for little concentration.

anyway, since i didn't really have the will to write, i watched _doctor who_ and lurked on tumblr instead.

i realize none of you probably care about these author's notes where i talk about my life, but oh well. deal with it.

disclaimer: don't own maximum ride.

* * *

_**15. time to waste**_

Joseph Stevens didn't even have to turn to look as his door opened; he knew who it was, and he knew what was going to be said. He'd suspected it might happen, and had prepared accordingly.

"S-Sir?"

That didn't mean actually hearing it wasn't going to be annoying.

Stevens closed his eyes and brought his hands up, rubbing his temples where he could feel a headache coming on. His assistant was a decent man - called Hill, he thought - and he did good work, but he was a complete coward. And it always showed at the worst of times.

"Judging by overwhelming waves of fear I sense emanating off your person," Stevens said dryly, "I assume that our primary plan did not work."

"Ah, y-yes, sir," Hill stammered. "Er, that is, no, it did not succeed. It seems the children were. . .prepared, in case a situation such as this arose. They've scattered."

Stevens sighed and stood up. He turned around to face Hill across the desk; the assistant quickly averted his eyes, setting down some reports and fussing with them. Stevens shook his head. Absolute coward.

"It's unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected. From what I've gathered about Constantine and Maximum, they would hardly have left themselves unprepared." He pulled one of the reports towards him and squinted down at it. "Where are they now?"

"We. . .lost visual," Hill said awkwardly. "On every subject, sir."

That caught Stevens by slight surprise. He stared at Hill until the man coughed uncomfortably.

"You lost visual," he said blankly.

"Y-yes, sir."

"There were twenty-eight in that house."

"Twenty-nine, if you include the dog," Hill pointed out. He looked as if he regretted it immediately.

Stevens took a deep breath. "Right," he said. "Now, of those twenty-nine, how many were under the age of, oh. . .ten years old?"

"Uh. . ." Hill looked confused, then consulted the reports "F-five, sir."

"Five." Stevens nodded, a gentle smile beginning on his lips. "Now, some of the older ones, I'm not surprised they shook their tail," he explained, sounding reasonable. "They're faster, they've had more experience, and they can generally lose themselves better in a crowd. Children, on the other hand, small children, work a little differently. It's rare to find small children unattended, and even rarer still for them to knowingly and successfully rid themselves of a follower. Now, these experiments we're dealing with are indeed exceptional, but their behavior patterns are generally the same as that of average humans. That being said, you're still telling me that my agents have failed me five times because five separate, small-minded _children_ have out-thought them."

Hill opened his mouth to respond, closed it again, and then fidgeted awkwardly. Looking embarrassed, he was reduced to staring at his feet in silence. Irritated, Stevens rolled his eyes and turned his back, staring out the window of his penthouse office. Washington D.C. was sprawled out before him, an unsuspecting hub of activity hiding his newfound corporation. More than one had questioned his decision to place his headquarters in the most important city of America, but he wouldn't have it any other way.

"I'm surrounded by idiots," Stevens mumbled.

Turning back to Hill, he ordered, "Call them to my conference room. The strike teams, the coordinators, everyone involved on this particular mission. I need to have _words_ with them about their performance."

Hill nodded, quickly gathered his reports, and left.

Less than ten minutes later, Stevens was standing at the back of a conference room packed with men from his specialized police force. There were roughly sixty of them, one brain and one muscle for each hybrid.

And they'd all failed him.

Stevens let the initial silence linger for a few minutes - just long enough for them all to fret over their past wrongs, their mistakes. Once he was sure each one knew exactly why they were there, Stevens looked to his assistant, who turned out the lights. Stevens reached out to the laptop that was sitting on a podium at his right and opened a set of profiles. A projector in the ceiling blinked alight and the agents in the room turned to look.

"Avian Group," he said shortly. Raising a remote control, Stevens pushed a button: a picture of a small boy with wide blue eyes appeared on the projector's screen, stretched over the wall at the front of the room. "Subject Nine, The Gasman." He pushed the _next_ button, summoning a picture of another little boy, this one looking much less innocent and much more disgruntled than the first. "Subject Ten, Shadow." Another click, another picture, another child. "Subject Eleven, Angel."

A few more clicks.

"Fish Group. Subject Twelve, Janey."

A few more.

"Cat Group. Subject Six, Antonio."

A last button and all five pictures popped up, smaller, arranged in a line. Stevens folded his hands behind his back and glanced around the room, picking out the children's handlers with his eyes. The two women in the back corner, a few more off to his right, the men sitting at the middle of the room's table, and the rest hanging near the door. All were shifting their positions, glancing at each other guiltily, irritably.

As they should.

"These five children are all under the age of ten years old," Stevens announced to the room. "That's less than a decade. Less than the amount of time all of you have worked as guns for hire. And yet not a single one of you could capture a single one of them."

He briefly met the eyes of each handler before bringing the remote up again. He backtracked through the files until he hit the beginning, with a hard-faced blackbird of reasonable menace.

"And here we have the _actual_ threats," he said. "Avian Group, Subject Alpha. Constantine. Sixteen-" He paused, squinting as he noticed the date of birth. "Oh. _Seventeen_ years old. As of September. Well, happy birthday to the Communist bastard."

He smiled good-naturedly, but nobody laughed, or even smiled back. So he went on.

"Now see, this is where I am truly disappointed in you. Would you like to know why?" Stevens didn't wait for an answer before plowing on, eyes fixed on the man and woman who'd been assigned as the boy's handlers. "Because you have been specifically trained to catch his type. The thief, the criminal. The _bad guy._ You have been trained to think like him. To act like him. To anticipate his every move and stop it from even happening in the first place."

He clicked over to another profile and shifted his focus to two women sitting near him, at this end of the table. Both pretended not to notice, instead staring at the screen, where their own target was now pictured.

"And Fish Group, Subject Two. Dylan Westerfield, sometimes known as Poseidon." Stevens checked the date of birth and chuckled. "Now, he doesn't turn seventeen until December, the little twig, but he is just as accomplished as Constantine is, if not more. And he, too, eluded you."

He paused, then held down the _next_ button of his remote until the profiles were flickering by in an infinite loop, forever flashing the children's faces.

"In fact, they _all_ eluded you. All twenty-eight of them. You know, that's probably some kind of record, actually. Do they keep records for that?" Stevens looked to Hill for confirmation, but of course the kid was sadly bewildered. "Number of escapees successfully shaking any task force at one time? You know, I'll bet they do. We should look into that. Because we need to tell them that we've made a new fucking _record!_" His voice had been rising, and ended in a shout as Stevens threw his remote across the room. Some of the agents flinched or ducked, and Hill scurried to retrieve the thrown control.

Stevens took a few breaths to calm himself, glaring at his team. "We must _think_ now, people," he said carefully. Hill appeared at his side and he absently held out his hand to receive his remote. "And the only reason I tell you this is because until now you have apparently chosen to ignore your common sense. They are _children._ They are not that hard to figure out."

"But. . ." A single man faltered as everyone in the room turned to stare at him. "Well, sir, their IQs-"

"I don't _care_ about their IQs," Stevens snapped. "Yes, they are advanced, but they are still. _Children._ What's more, they are _criminal_ children. It is unacceptable that you have allowed them to escape. To rectify this mistake, you must capture every last single one of them. And if you can't do even that, then I want you to focus on her." Stevens pointed his remote and found Spark's file, showing the entire room her misleadingly carefree grin. "Avian Subject Five. Spark."

Out of the corner of his eye, Stevens saw Matt Davis and Evan Adams - Spark's handlers, and the two who had begun this entire catastrophe - glance at each other, jaws tight, eyes hard with irritation.

A woman who'd been in charge of one of the cats timidly asked, "Why her?"

"Because she is the one who murdered my son," Stevens said, and it seemed as if the silence in the room became quieter. Heavier. "And if I don't get justice for him soon, things will get. . .messy."

The agents shared uneasy glances with their partners, their friends, their rivals; nobody on the force was free of guilt, frustration, determination, or sorrow.

_Good._

"Well? Think!" Stevens barked, and half the room jumped. "Where are they? Where will they go?" He pulled up Con's file. "Where will Constantine lead them?" He shifted to Max's. "Where will Maximum lead them?" One of the cats. "How will the felines slow them down?" Back to Poseidon. "How will the fish slow them down?" He gripped the podium, knuckles white, and stared around the room, searching for a flicker of intelligence. "How will they evade us and where will they hide?"

The silence fell again, but more thoughtful this time than afraid. Finally, one of the braver agents spoke up and began the brainstorming session.

"It seems as though they've split up," he said slowly. He consulted some papers in front of him and added, "Everyone on site reported seeing them scatter, with different hybrids heading in different directions."

"Right." Another man picked up the train of thought. "So we'll set secondary teams out after those trails, while we focus on her." He gestured to the screen and faltered; Stevens obliged by pulling up Spark's file again. "That girl, Spark. Try to find out where she went, where she ran, because she knows she's the one we're after."

Hill looked to Stevens, who waved lazily; the assistant scurried off to set up the tracking team.

"Any ideas on where she'd go?" one woman asked, looking to Davis and Adams. Adams stared the woman down unkindly.

_Yes,_ Stevens thought, urging the team on with his thoughts._ Think of it. Get there._

Davis stepped in by mentioning, "She bolted like a deer when he went for his cuffs. She was terrified, probably still is. She'll go someplace where she feels safe."

_Yes. Safety. Where is that?_ Stevens wondered sarcastically, gripping his remote hard.

"And she won't stop," Adams said shortly. "Not now, she's too scared, too smart. She knows she's faster than we are, so she'll have more time to hide. If she's close, she'll be well-hidden."

"Or she could be more obvious, and just far away," a man suggested. "Take advantage of her wings to get a head start."

_Yes, but _where,_ you imbeciles? _Stevens slouched over his podium, tapping the remote against his forehead. _The answer's right there._

"We shouldn't overlook her time with Maximum," one of the girl's handlers said importantly. "That group has been living wild for a while, she's sure to have picked up some stuff. We should have local police send out some dogs in the outskirts."

_Oh, my. . ._ Unable to take it anymore, Stevens groaned and straightened up. "_Why_ are you all so _blind?_"

"Excuse me?" Adams asked, somewhat angrily.

"Blind," Stevens repeated. "All of you. Spark is bright, yes, and she's caused trouble, yes, but you need to remember that she's only been on our radar for four months at the most. Where was she prior to that?"

Adams and Davis glanced at each other again, but the rest of the room was at a loss.

". . .We don't know," said an agent uncomfortably.

"Hm." Stevens snapped his fingers and his assistant - who'd returned from setting up the track teams - fumbled to hand him a folder. He grabbed and flung it at the table; loose papers and pictures scattered across the glass surface. "The answer's in there. Find it."

The folder, of course, was Spark's master file. A few of the agents tried to gather the papers together, while others still found the pictures and studied them.

A man who'd found the basic information - birth date, known places of residence, and the like - looked up. "Uh, sir? Are you suggesting she would return to her home life?"

"Yes," Stevens answered crisply. He caught sight of Adams and Davis slipping out of the room in his peripheral vision, off to chase down the lead. "Our targets are mutants, yes, but they are still partly human. And what's more, they're children. Home is where they feel safe. Home is what they'll do anything to protect. So they will visit it, make sure it's safe, and when they think they've done their job, we will have to be there to make sure they haven't."

The man flustered. "There are. . .quite a few addresses here, sir, it'll take us a few-"

"Minutes?" Stevens interrupted. "Oh, I hope so. The answer's obvious." The man still looked confused, so Stevens raised his voice, making some in the room flinch. "So find it _now_ so you can get there _now_ so we don't waste any more time! Because they sure as hell won't!"

And he threw his remote at the screen again before storming out of the room, Hill scampering along after him.

* * *

Fun fact about Nevada: its only reason for existing lies in the very southern tip of it. Right on I-15. A little west of Lake Mead. Somewhere almost a third of the way between Santa Barbara, California, and Monument, Colorado.

And for some reason Con wanted to act like it wasn't even there.

"Dude."

"No."

"But _dude._"

"No."

I stuck out my lip and blew some stray hair out of my face. He'd been stonewalling me with "no"s ever since the neon jewel had appeared on the horizon, but that wasn't stopping me yet.

Con glanced at me and rolled his eyes. "You're stalling and you know it," he told me, and I groaned.

"I know, but it's for a good reason!" I persisted. "Come on. Just a few hours, that's all I'm asking."

"No."

"It's not even out of the way."

"That's beside the point."

"But. . .but. . ." I flailed for a better explanation and failed to find one. "Come _on._"

"You're not even old enough to do anything there."

"So? Neither are you. But we can pass for older, with the right look."

Con continued to shake his head. "It's too much trouble."

"Aw, come _ooonnnn,_" I wheedled. "Not even if I let you run off to a strip club?"

"Just what kind of guy do you think I am?" he asked dryly.

"One who's ruled by his libido," I retorted.

He smirked but still shook his head. "Answer's still no."

"Come _ooonnnn,_" I pleaded yet again. "_Please._ Even Max and Fang have been there, you wanna be outdone by them?"*

He shook his head and resolved to ignoring me.

As if that would work.

I flapped my wings a few times to fully catch up with him. "Please?"

"No."

I shifted up an airstream and kicked at his back. _"S'il vous plaît?"_

"No."

Down to his other side. _"Por favor?"_

"No."

Beneath. _"Le do thoil?"_

"No."

Upside down. _"Te kudasai?"_

"No."

In front of and looking back. _"Vinsamlegast?"_

"No."

And at his side again, restarting the cycle. _"Kr̥pay__ā?__"_

"No."

_"Asseblief?"_

"No."

_"Ve molime?"_

"No."

_"Prosz__ę__?"_

"No!"

Ooh, a break. I'd noticed the vein pulsing angrily in his forehead, and the gradual clenching of his jaw, and the disgruntled scowl, and the clenched fists, but all of that was normal. But the snap on that last "no" was a sign: he was beginning to lose patience now. Maybe once more, with the right - oh!

_"Pozhaluĭsta?"_

"Oh, my God, _fine!_" Con yelled, finally losing it. "Yes, fine! _Khorosho!_"

"YES!" I punched the air and sped up in front of him, swooping up and twirling in the air, ecstatically happy over my success. "Mother Russia wins again!"

"Yeah, whatever, you stupid. . ." Con's reply trailed off into grumbled Russian words, mostly of the cussing persuasion, but I chose to ignore him.

Because, come on. I mean, it's _Vegas._ How do you just ignore something like that?

* * *

*i really have no idea where the line is between the real books' continuity and what i choose to ignore. i just guesstimate 'cuz i'm too lazy to actually think about it.

OMG i'm actually tying the foreboding bad-guy part back into the story. that's growth, people. writer's growth. a new rosebud on my thorned bush of creativity.

and bonus points if you can guess all the languages spark asked "please" in. and that's "guess" as in _actually guessing,_ okay, so no google translate. this isn't spanish class. cheating is not allowed.


End file.
